Overview

The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George’s Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel.

Problem Description

The sea is of significant economic importance to regional trade, shipping and transport, fishing, and power generation in the form of wind power and nuclear plants. Annual traffic between Great Britain and Ireland amounts to over 12 million passengers and 17 million tonnes of traded goods.
There is an increased risk of devastation due to socio-economic factors as the floodrisk areas with fertile soil and access to communications are generally densely populated: many cities have developed at the coast. Driven by projected increases of sea level, more intense rainfall, and stronger winds, flood risks are anticipated to increase in the future and impact this region.
In the UK, the coastline is 4500 km long. 2,200 km2 (with 5% of the population), is at risk of coastal flooding: some large urban and agricultural areas, but also very many small more isolated areas. The capital value at risk is estimated at 250 billion euros.

Research focus

Previous work (Davies et al. 2011) has highlighted the importance of grid resolution on model performance. The multi-scale Fluidity-ICOM will use a high resolution focused on Liverpool bay which smoothly gradates out to a coarsely resolved Atlantic.
Verification and validation of the model will be undertaken by comparison with existing model results, joining the model-intercomparison described in Davies et al. 2011. The extensive observational data described and established validation methods (Jones and Davies 2010) provide a solid procedure to validate the new multi-scale approach. Surge elevation from tidal gauges and an extensive dataset of current measurements has been gathered by NOC-Liverpool’s radar array (HF- and X- band systems) that has been deployed since 2004.
Meteorological forcing: Surge elevations, depth mean currents and tidal forcing.
Ocean and tidal influences to be investigated include wave-current interaction upon the surge elevations, wind stress and its parameterisation, air-sea drag and its parameterisation, and new modelling approaches of inundation and wetting and drying of low-lying flood-prone areas.
Data simulation tools will be used to quantify the effect of uncertainties and perform sensitivity analysis to improve the predicative accuracy of storm surges and their impact.

Collaboration with other work packages in PEARL are as follows:

  • WP2: a) hazard modelling utilising the PEARL modelling toolkit (Fluidity-ICOM), b) quantification of the effect of uncertainties, perform sensitivity analysis, thus improving the predicative accuracy of storm surges;
  • Philippines, Leyte: No early warning, no evacuation systems;
  • WP3: holistic risk assessment;
  • WP5: analysis of potential engineering strategies, FRI.