Real-time forecasting of morphological storm impacts: a case study in the Netherlands

Recent events like the Sumatra tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have reminded the world of the vulnerability of coastal areas to extreme events. Despite hydraulic engineering measures to minimize failure probability of coastal defence structures, a probability of failure, albeit small, remains. To assist local authorities and the population in their response to extreme events, timely access to relevant information of sufficient accuracy regarding impending natural threats is crucial. Current real-time systems do not include all relevant physics (e.g. morphodynamic response). This paper describes the efforts in the framework of the MICORE project to develop such an improved real-time system for the prediction of storm impacts. This paper addresses the proposed system architecture and some preliminary results. Also the paper addresses some aspects of the development environment that may be of more general interest than to this project alone.