Tidal inlets and estuaries: Comparison of Bruun, Escoffier, O'Brien and attractors

The attractor analysis, while still based on a lumped model, adds sediment transport and deposition/scour equations and enables the use of more realistic entrance hydrodynamics. It predicts the rates of change and presents the results on a practical “attractor map”. The predictions of the three empirical laws are compared with the attractor map and their practical application is critically compared. The empirical laws are shown to provide broadly equivalent predictions to the attractor map, but over limited ranges of estuary conditions. In particular, none of the empirical laws identifies the entrance closure state or describes conditions near closure.