Turbulence is a dominant factor in the design of scour protections downstream of hydraulic structures. For the detailed design phase, numerous tools are available for quantifying turbulence levels. However, the guidance on turbulence for the feasibility and preliminary design stage is sparse. There is a need for tools to quantify turbulence more accurately in the early stages of design, where the designer has a large number of options on the table and has to judge their performance rapidly. We built up a model that consistently describes the energy levels in the main flow and in turbulence, the transfer between them and the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy. The model was confronted with laboratory data. First performance of the model was satisfactory and several items for further development were identified.@en