HYDROTAM: A Coastal Engineering Model Based on Cloud Computing

HYDROTAM is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integrated three-dimensional, baroclinic numerical model that has been developed to simulate the hydrodynamic and transport processes in coastal waters. The GIS platform facilitates the time consuming task of preparation of data input and output structures. As the infrastructure it is based on cloud computing. In its interface all functions of the MS Silverlight framework are available to the user in a menu driven graphical user interface (GUI). The numerical model consists of hydrodynamic, transport and turbulence model components. In the hydrodynamic model component, the 3D Navier-Stokes equations are solved with the Boussinesq approximation. The transport model component consists of the pollutant transport, water temperature and salinity transport and suspended sediment transport models. In the turbulence model, a two-equation k-e formulation is solved to calculate the kinetic energy of the turbulence and its rate of dissipation, which provides the variable vertical turbulent eddy viscosity.