Improvement of an existing shoreline evolution numerical model marine 2019

The coastal areas are facing serious erosion problems. The increasing urban pressure on coastal areas and the continuous shoreline retreat, lead to the anticipation of significant investments to protect the population living in the littoral. In order to avoid coastal erosion and flooding, and their consequent social, economic and environmental negative impacts, it is essential to accurately characterize the coastal evolution trends. The importance of the numerical modelling in civil engineering has been increasing in the last years, being the coastal engineering a relevant example. Since the 1970s, several types of numerical models have been developed for engineering applications with the purpose of analyze and predict the coastal morphology. One-line models based on the Pelnard-Considère [1] theory are commonly used to simulate the shoreline position variability of sandy beaches. LTC (Long-Term Configuration) is a numerical model developed to support coastal zone planning and management regarding erosion problems [2, 3]. LTC combines a simple classical one-line model with a rule-based model for erosion/accretion volumes distribution along the cross-shore profile. This model was designed for sandy beaches, where the main cause of the coastal dynamics and shoreline evolution is the alongshore sediment transport gradients, depending on the wave climate, water levels, sediment’ sources and sinks, sediment’s characteristics and boundary conditions. The model inputs are the wave climate, the water level, and the bathymetry and topography of the landward adjacent zones which is changed during calculation. Extensive areas can be analyzed up to 100 years. LTC code was developed in Fortran language and both input and output data were done through notepad files. Therefore, a graphical interface and the improvement of specific aspects on the initial code have been developed, being presented in this work. The knowledge of wave characteristics at the wave breaking depths (output data in the new interface), the representation of the cross-shore active width of the profiles along the coast and along time, and the introduction of new options to read bathymetric data, are some examples of the model updates. The development of the graphical interface is performed in C# language. It was intended that the new interface is resourceful and intuitive, aiming to allow new useful tools for the users. In conclusion, this work presents the new interface of LTC model, highlighting some of the improvements made possible in the numerical model due to the new interface characteristics.