Does a more sophisticated storm erosion model improve probabilistic erosion estimates?

Does a more sophisticated storm erosion model improve probabilistic erosion estimates?

Ranasinghe, R.W.M.R.J.B.
Callaghan, D.
Roelvink, D.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

2013-06-24

The dependency between the accuracy/uncertainty of storm erosion exceedance estimates obtained via a probabilistic model and the level of sophistication of the structural function (storm erosion model) embedded in the probabilistic model is assessed via the application of Callaghan et al.'s (2008) Joint Probability Model (JPM) at Narrabeen beach, Australia with three different structural functions: (a) Kriebel and Dean (1993) (analytical); (b) SBEACH (semiempirical); and (c) XBeach (fully process based). Results indicate that the accuracy is greatest for JPM-SBEACH and lowest for JPM-XBeach. The most uncertain results are given by JPM-XBeach while the most robust results are given by JPM-SBEACH. Thus, it appears that increasing the level of sophistication of the structural function beyond the semi-empirical SBEACH model, may not always lead to better results and may even be counter-productive.

storm erosion
probabilistic model
XBeach
SBEACH
Kriebel and Dean
Narrabeen

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0fb1241f-5557-4cfe-90a8-80eb59793881

Bordeaux University

Coastal Dynamics 2013: 7th International Conference on Coastal Dynamics, Arcachon, France, 24-28 June 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)