Waves in Shallow Water (WASH)

Breaking and broken waves are a key cause of coastal flooding and erosion, the underlying goal of this research project is to increase understanding of energetic nearshore waves, with the aim of enabling more robust predictions of coastal hazards.

WASH will use a network of jetty-mounted Lidar at field sites in the UK and Chile to obtain measurements of the water surface across the complete surf and swash zone at an unprecedented frequency and spatial resolution, aiming to provide the most complete field dataset to date of breaking and broken waves.  These measurements, combined with hydrodynamic and topographic data will help us to answer unresolved questions related to wave transformation in the nearshore and provide an ideal resource to test, and possibly improve the way we incorporate nearshore waves into the coastal models used by coastal engineers and managers.