A hybrid framework for predicting waves and longshore currents

An easily operable computational system has been designed to simulate waves and longshore currents. The system is composed of a MATLAB GUI in the foreground, which directs the integration of the SWAN shallow water wave model with a 1D surf model in the background. This newly developed tool first performs a rapid implementation of SWAN in a specific site followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the wave model output. Cross-shore profiles and other surf model input parameters are defined graphically directly from the SWAN output results. Longshore currents are then evaluated immediately in various locations. Besides testing the application of the described system in different environments, a comparison to measurements from a field experiment is also performed. Comparisons were made for longshore current velocities from both ‘in situ’ measurements as well as currents resulting from quasi-3D nearshore circulation model (SHORECIRC) simulations. The results indicate that the system developed provides reasonable predictions and that the hybrid modeling approach used can be also applied in some areas where the 1D beach paradigm is not valid.