Work on digital twin will pave the way for permanent tsunami facility
We have welcomed Dr Sabana Parvin, a researcher from London Southbank University (LSBU), to work with our team to create a digital twin of our ‘dual generator’ tsunami technology. We hope that the work will be used to build a much-needed tsunami generation facility and further research into tsunami resilient buildings and coastal defences.
Dual generation enables us to simulate tsunami waves coming into shore and then back to sea for the first time. The concept was proved in 2023, and now researchers would like to see a permanent dual generator to serve as a hub for visiting researchers from around the world. Dr Parvin’s digital twin will be used to turn this vison into a reality by model the fluid dynamics needed to operate the dual generator.
Dr Parvin joins us fresh from her studies in India, where she completed a PhD in applied mathematics to improve Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models. She is now very excited to apply her modelling skills to a real-world problem. Her work is supported by an Innovate UK grant via a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.
She says: ‘I saw the destruction and human cost caused by the Boxing Day Tsunami first-hand when I visited the Andaman Islands as a teenager, as well as during my studies in Chennai. I feel hopeful that my research could be the next step on the journey to minimise risks for vulnerable communities around the world’
The LSBU/HR Wallingford collaboration will further nearly 20 years of research into how to accurately simulate tsunamis.
The need for tsunami simulation was originally pinpointed by the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London (UCL) where researchers were trying to improve building standards following the 2004 Boxing day Tsunami. HR Wallingford took on the task and, since then, tsunami simulation has gone from strength-to-strength, with the dual generator the latest in a long line of innovations in the field.
