CIRP Technical Discussion Focuses on Advancing the Dune Response Tool and Applications to Short- and Long-term Processes Impact: Delivering rapidly deployable coastal dune response prediction and analysis software to USACE Practitioners helps quantify benefits of dunes in federal projects. The Coastal Inlets Research Program’s (CIRP) work unit, “Tools for Simulating Aeolian Sediment Transport Near Inlets” is focused on developing a range of numerical tools for the simulation of aeolian sediment transport and dune evolution in the vicinity of tidal inlets and other sandy coastal environments. The Dune Response Tool (DRT), which has been developed under this CIRP work unit, was released as part of an in-progress Technical Discussion (CIRP TD) on July 21, 2020. The DRT provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to run simple and fast dune erosion and accretion models suitable for screening-level assessments. The tool automatically interfaces with national scale oceanographic databases and dune morphology datasets to set up scenarios for simulating volumetric changes of coastal foredunes due to waves and water levels (erosion) and winds (accretion) for time scales of days to years along the U.S. Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts. User-input dune geometries can also be added to assess the performance of specific dune designs. Both a hindcasting and 3-day forecasting mode are implemented within the GUI. This work is of national significance as dunes are often the first line of defense against storm-induced flooding. Comprehensive and easy to use tools for coastal evolution have been highly sought by USACE practitioners in order to enable quantification of coastal change hazards and to optimize dune designs on federal beach nourishment projects. The results of this model development project will provide District practitioners new approaches for evaluating project alternatives in a 3x3x3 framework, including PDT members that called in to the CIRP TD for updates on the benefits on this research. This work was presented to 21 ERDC researchers and 17 field practitioners from different Districts around the USACE as illustrated in Figure 2. This research was performed under the Coastal Inlets Research Program, funded by Operations and Maintenance R&D. Learn more at https://cirp.usace.army.mil/. Harness the power of ERDC at ERDCinfo@usace.army.mil.
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Figure 1: Dune Response Tool graphical user interface (left image) and an example output of environmental time series and morphological changes from the tool for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for a hindcast simulation of Hurricane Sandy (right image)
Figure 2: Screen shot of the CIRP Technical Discussion, “Tools for Simulating Aeolian Sediment Transport Near Inlets�, on Tuesday, July 21, 2020, with 38 attendees.
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