Application of numerical wave models at European coastlines: A review

Abstract

Significant advancements have been made in the past few decades (since the 1980s) on detailed evaluation and quantification of wave resources globally. Larger availability and advances of computational resources have contributed to the utilisation of numerical wave models as powerful tools in climatic and energy studies. This review presents current state-of-the-art numerical tools and their status in the process of wave power assessments. We focus on the evolution of studies undertaken at the European coastline regions and the Black Sea.Although, a number of studies have been successfully developed and implemented in the past contributing to our understanding of the resource, this paper discusses the benefits, limitations and potential for improvement of numerical tools. From the literature, it is evident that different applications and scale may require different models, however, it is also the experience and knowledge of the user, applied in the tuning of a number of parameters that govern the process of wave generation, propagation, and the quality of input parameters that are the cornerstones of a successful model. This review depicted that the use of numerical wave models, depending on specific region and application, offers significant benefits on quantification of coastal zone wave resources which benefit multiple offshore applications and the energy industry.

An Evaluation of the Wind and Wave Dynamics along the European Coasts

“…Therefore, the linear trends illustrated in Figure 8 and the data from Table 5, estimate that the future significant wave heights can increase or decrease in the range 0.01-0.07 m per decade. At this point, it can be mentioned that the resulting data are in correspondence with the analysis conducted by some other authors, as for example [40][41][42]. The mechanism of the wave formation is extremely complex due to the high number of variables.…”

Wind waves in the Adriatic Sea under a severe climate change scenario and implications for the coasts

“…SWAN provides a phase-averaged description of short-crested, wind-generated sea states by reproducing generation, evolution, and dissipation of wave action variance density spectra. The model runs on structured and unstructured grid (Zijlema, 2010) and has been applied in a number of conditions and geographical frameworks (Cavaleri et al, 2007;Lavidas and Venugopal, 2018). In this implementation, which follows a thorough validation of the model in the Adriatic Sea under different events (Benetazzo et al, 2012(Benetazzo et al, , 2013(Benetazzo et al, , 2014, the frequency domain was divided into 25 logarithmically distributed values ranging between 0.05 and 0.5 Hz, evaluated within 36 directional sectors with 360 s time step.…”

North Sea Wave Database (NSWD) and the Need for Reliable Resource Data: A 38 Year Database for Metocean and Wave Energy Assessments

“…Firstly, the construction of useful boundary and feed-in information. For the development of such a long-term dataset we have to ensure that proper methods are used and most importantly a suitable wave model is utilised [19]. The SWAN model is suitable to provide reliable information at the nearshore, as it contains the possibility of modelling complex non-linear interactions that exist near the coastlines.…”

“…The wave characterisation at such large scales have been done by several authors with resulted datasets providing important information on the state of Climate Change over the region [3], return values for extreme events [7,21], and climate characterisation [22]. The studies used models that are efficient at larger domains, but have inherit limitation in terms of resolving higher resolution domains and nearshore complexities [19].…”

“…It is of importance for the model to be configured and set-up according to the application. In addition, reliable results have to be obtained by careful validation, after model calibration [19].…”