Water motion over tidal flats

Abstract

Tidal flats are important coastal ecosystems that support a diverse range of plants and animals. Accurate prediction of water motion over tidal flats is crucial for the design of coastal infrastructure, hazard assessment, environmental management and oceanography research. Defina [1] derived a new set of shallow water equations that allow for water motion prediction in partially dry domains. Existing methods for predicting water motion are limited by numerical stability and accuracy, and require high-quality input data. Using the periodic behaviour of tides, this thesis introduces a new method in the frequency domain. The method is tested and compared to a fully numerical solution. The results of the linearised classical shallow water equations encourage future research required for the statistical shallow water equations that allow partially dry domains.