Prof. Roelvink has 36 years of experience in coastal engineering and research. He has participated as team member and as project manager in a number of major consultancy projects related to coastal morphology. He has managed the development of the Delft3D model system for two- and three-dimensional simulation of waves, currents, water quality, ecology and morphodynamics, and has heavily contributed to development of the morphological part of this system. He has been actively involved in the EU-sponsored MaST-G6M and MaST-G8M, SASME, COAST3D, DELOS and MICORE research projects on coastal morphodynamics and has recently participated in Risc-KIT.
In 1993 he obtained a PhD-degree at Delft University of Technology, based on a thesis on the effect of surf beats on coastal profiles. He has published over 150 articles on coastal hydraulics and morphodynamics in international journals and conference proceedings (Scopus h-index 40), and he has been a part-time Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology from 1990-2005 and presently holds an honorary Professorship there.
Since 2005 he has been Head of the Chairgroup Coastal Systems & Engineering and Port Development at UNESCO-IHE, now IHE Delft; since then this group has grown quickly in staff, students, research and societal impact. He is a strong proponent of international scientific cooperation with various parties in order to further the state-of-the-art in morphodynamic modelling and has set up collaborative projects with the US Geological Survey, the US Office of Naval Research, the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as with numerous institutes in France, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Brazil and West-Africa. He has initiated and currently leads the development of XBeach, an open-source model for storm impacts on beaches, dunes, barriers and reef coasts. In 2011 he published a bestselling 'Guide to modeling coastal morphology' with World Scientific.
Research Summary
My field of expertise is in coastal hydrodynamics and morphodynamics modelling, in one, two or three dimensions. I started my career at Delft Hydraulics doing research on expert systems, coastal profile (CROSTRAN, UNIBEST-TC) and coastline models (UNIBEST-CL), and quickly moved into the development of 2D and 3D hydrodynamic modelling, leading the development of the Delft3D system and contributing heavily to wave-driven currents and coastal morphology within it. While working there I got a PhD on modelling of surf beat and its effect on coastal profiles. Spent decades with students doing validation studies for theoretical, lab and field cases and guided Giles Lesser in the development of the current, 3D morphology version where sediment transport and morphological change are tightly coupled within the flow module.
After moving (mostly) to IHE Delft I initiated the development of a fully open-source model for storm impacts, XBeach, where our experience with 2D modelling was combined with the realization of the importance of infragravity waves (surf beat) in storm erosion. This model has developed into a de facto standard for dune erosion and barrier overwashing and breaching, but has been extended for use in coral reef environments, ship waves and runup and inundation studies. It is also starting to be applicable to larger timescales, and has been coupled with aeolian components (Duna, Aeolis).
Lately, my work has focused a lot on coastal erosion in countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and several West-African countries. This has been an inspiration for a new approach to coastal planform modelling, using a free-form, vector-based model ShorelineS.
Publications
A complete list of publications can be found in Google Scholar.