Strategies for Enhancing the Predictive Ability of Sediment Transport Models

In this paper the relevance of several factors affecting the predictive ability of sediment transport models are identified and strategies for its improvement are proposed. The investigations have been carried out in a tidally dominated coastal area on the German North Sea. The strategies and functional relationships proposed here might be applicable to similar coastal areas. Emphasis is given to the integration of field measurements and process-based models to deliver better descriptions of the input parameters over the entire study area. The inclusion of cohesive properties of sediments, spatial variability of bed roughness and sediment grain sizes as well as the incorporation of the conditions below the loose sediment layer proved to be most relevant factors. As a result of the various enhancements and excellent agreement between computed and observed values resulted.