Validation of Visually Observed Waves with the Recorded Waves on the Southwest Coast of India

Abstract

The wave climate, pre-requisite information for planning and design of coastal engineering structures, can be obtained by different methods. Coastal protection works require wave climate in the nearshore region; deployment of wave sensors and visual observation of the waves from the shore are among the methods that can be adopted for collecting the wave data. On the southwest coast of India (Kerala), wave data have been collected by visual observation from the shore, at 18 stations located along the entire coastline since 1973. The pressure type wave sensors were installed in the nearshore region at four stations, almost equally spaced along the coast and data acquired for a period of 4 years. Of the four instrument stations, two were located at the visual observation station itself, the third one was about 7 km from the nearest visual observation station and the fourth station midway between two visual observation stations-the distance between the instrument station and the visual observation stations being about 20 km. Study revealed that the visually observed wave parameters are comparable with the wave parameters acquired by the instrument, particularly with respect to the wave height.