Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi Environmental Modelling Capacity Building

The Environment agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD) recently completed online guided tutorials focusing on developing purpose built water quality modelling tools. These tutorials have built modelling capacity within the Agency and will assist it to proactively manage its precious marine environmental resources. Designed as interactive workshops, the tutorials have enabled EAD to design, build, calibrate and simulate environmental scenarios of the Abu Dhabi coastal waters using a series of TUFLOW FV water quality models and also other complimentary tools and software. Topics covered included:

• Introduction to environmental modelling
• Developing conceptual models to meet environmental management objectives
• Data requirements to support development of fit for purpose environmental models
• Designing a targeted field campaign
• Designing and building a model mesh and bathymetry
• Development, calibration and evaluation of performance metrics for hydrodynamic and water quality models
• Designing model scenarios for environmental management decision making
• Visualisation and reporting of model results for stakeholders

The increased use of TUFLOW for water quality modelling applications across a wide range of environmental settings globally is encouraging and exciting for the TUFLOW Team. At the time of writing training is occurring in Australia, Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East. The next round of EAD training will commence in the coming weeks. The BMT Environment team who are leading this education program are looking forward to the opportunity for continued knowledge sharing as part of the environmental modelling capacity building project.