Section: Overall Objectives

Scientific challenges

Due to the variety of applications with a wide range of spatial scales, reduced-size models like the shallow water equations are generally required. From the modelling point of view, the main issue is to describe the behaviour of the flow with a reduced-size model taking into account several physical processes such as non-hydrostatic terms, biological species evolution, topography and structure interactions within the flow. The mathematical analysis of the resulting model do not enter the field of hyperbolic equations anymore and new strategies have to be proposed. Moreover, efficient numerical resolutions of reduced-size models require particular attention due to the different time scales of the processes and in order to recover physical properties such as positivity, conservativity, entropy dissipation and equilibria.

The models can remain subject to uncertainties that originate from incomplete description of the physical processes and from uncertain parameters. Further development of the models may rely on the assimilation of observational data and the uncertainty quantification of the resulting analyses or forecasts.