Q. Jim Chen and CEE Host 2023 FUNWAVE Workshop
Last week, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Northeastern, alongside partners from The Center for Applied Coastal Research (CACR), University of Delaware, and the US Army Engineer and Development Center (ERDC) hosted the fifth FUNWAVE-TVD Training Workshop. The workshop covered a variety of topics, ranging from wave theory to numerical modeling to coastal engineering applications, and included hands-on trainings and seminars on modeling development and case studies.
“FUNWAVE, an open-source community model, has been adopted by Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a tool to predict the impacts of tsunamis, hurricane waves, ship wakes, and more, for coastal resilience and sustainability initiatives and programs,” explained Professor Q. Jim Chen, lead faculty for the coastal engineering cohort within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Northeastern has actively contributed to the community model development and application.” Using modeling software like FUNWAVE, engineers and scientists can predict complex nearshore wave processes and inform policymakers of the potential threats to coastal communities from natural and anthropogenic hazards. As climate change effects intensify and sea levels rise, tools like these will be critical to protecting the huge percentage of the human population that lives in coastal regions.
The conference, which ran from July 25-27, featured heavy involvement from Northeastern researchers and students. Motivated by more than a dozen drownings in Florida panhandle beaches this summer, Prof. Q. Jim Chen gave a seminar on predicting hazardous rip currents using FUNWAVE-TVD. Dr. Ling Zhu, senior research scientist, and Reza Salatin, Ph.D. candidate, delivered presentations on their research regarding model development and application for nature-based solutions, and served as the training instructors for two sessions. Coastal engineering graduate students in CEE participated in the workshop and helped with the meeting logistics.
The successful event brought more than 50 attendees from across the US, Europe, Asia, and South America to Northeastern’s Boston campus.