Spring 2016
Colloquia are held on Fridays at 11:30 a.m. in Cullimore Lecture Hall II, unless noted otherwise. Refreshments are served at 11:30 am. For questions about the seminar schedule, please contact Yassine Boubendir.
Date: February 19, 2016
Speaker: Kyle Mandli
Applied Mathematics,
Columbia University
Title: "Enabling Storm Surge Prediction for High-Resolution Forecasts and Climate Scenarios"
Abstract:
Coastal hazards related to strong storms are one of the most frequently recurring and wide spread hazards to coastal communities today. In particular storm surge, the rise of the sea surface in response to wind and pressure forcing from these storms, can have a devastating effect on the coastline. Furthermore, with the addition of climate change related effects, the ability to predict these events quickly and accurately is critical to the protection and sustainability of these coastal areas.
Computational approaches to this problem must be able to handle its multi-scale nature while remaining computationally tractable and physically relevant. This has commonly been accomplished by solving a depth-averaged set of fluid equations and by employing non-uniform and unstructured grids. These approaches, however, have often had shortcomings due to computational expense, the need for involved model tuning, and missing physics.
In this talk, I will outline some of the approaches we have developed to address several of these shortcomings through the use of advanced computational techniques. These include adaptive mesh refinement, higher levels of parallelism including many-core technologies, and more accurate model equations such as the two-layer shallow water equations. Combining these new approaches promises to address some of the problems in current state-of-the-art models while continuing to decrease the computational overhead needed to calculate a forecast or climate scenario.