Introduction

The Hydro-environmental Research Centre at Cardiff University was first established in 1997 when Professors Roger Falconer (Director) and Binliang Lin (Deputy Director) moved from the University of Bradford to Cardiff University.  More recently other staff appointments have been made to the Centre, including: Dr Catherine Wilson (Senior Lecturer), Dr Bettina Bockelmann-Evans (Senior Lecturer), Dr William B Rauen (Lecturer) and Dr Michaela Bray (Lecturer).  Research within the Centre is sponsored by the Halcrow Group and Arup consulting engineering companies, and was previously sponsored by Hyder plc (1997-00).  In addition to the academic staff, at any time the Centre typically has over 20 research associates and research students, as at present.

Our research activities involve the following main areas:

• Computational hydraulics modelling
• Coastal and estuarine hydrodynamics and water quality
• Flood modelling of river basin systems
• Eco-hydraulics and vegetation impact, including wetlands and mangroves
• Surface and groundwater interactions
• Sediment transport and geomorphological modelling
• Water quality and contaminant process modelling
• Disinfection and wastewater treatment process modelling
• Tidal stream turbine design and operation
• Turbulence measurement and modelling
• Numerical methods and solution procedures
• Hydraulic laboratory modelling studies

The Centre has an international reputation in environmental water management, with collaborative studies being undertaken with institutions in 14 countries, as well as other UK universities, Halcrow Group Ltd., Arup, HR Wallingford, Environment Agency, Scottish Water, APB MER, Cardiff Harbour Authority and several SMEs in the region.

The Centre’s numerical model DIVAST (Depth-Integrated Velocities and Solute Transport) has been mounted by over 40 companies and government organisations for practical EIA studies and by over 50 academic institutions in 19 countries for research purposes. DIVAST and its 3-D extension (TRIVAST) are used to predict a range of water quality indicators including: salinity, temperature, faecal and total coliforms, faecal streptococci and disease burden risk levels, biochemical oxygen demand, dissolved oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, phytoplanktonic algae, non-cohesive and cohesive sediments and heavy metals. More recently, the Centre has been collaborating with the Water Research Centre, Iran, to refine and apply their unstructured grid finite volume model HEMAT (Hydro-Environmental Modelling Analysis Tool). This model has high quality pre- and post-processor capabilities and works within a Windows-based environment. The Centre has also developed a model, CONTANK, for predicting velocity, disinfection and indicator organism distributions in disinfection contact tanks. Research students working on these models use the Centre’s software in source code form and are free to retain the software for research purposes on completion of their studies at Cardiff.

The Centre has a large, well equipped hydraulics laboratory, including: a large tidal basin, 2 recirculating flumes (1.2m wide and 0.3m wide), a large tidal flume (1.2m wide, 1.0m deep, bidirectional flow capacity of up to 1 cumec) and a model disinfection tank. The flumes and basins can accommodate a wide range of hydraulic model experiments, as can be seen from the list of research projects undertaken to date. Sophisticated measuring equipment include: a number of Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (up to 200Hz of sampling frequency), 2 digital fluorometers, a bed profiler, an automated multi-probe water level monitoring system and access to a Laser Doppler Anemometer. The Centre staff also work closely with other research groups and government departments and industry, across Wales and internationally, in acquiring field data.

Keywords:
hydro-environmental, environmental hydraulics, hydroinformatics, hydrodynamics, water quality, coastal waters, estuaries, rivers, ecohydraulics, sediment transport, disinfection, DIVAST, TRIVAST, HEMAT