Assessing
risks to infrastructure projects in the Middle East from
drifting/blowing sand using WRF
Wayne
Boulton
RWDI, Inc.
2 pm November 5 in Room 2554
Abstract:
Significant planning and engineering efforts are underway to develop an
integrated, multi-national rail network across the Arabian Peninsula.
Passenger lines, some designed to support speeds in excess of 200
kilometres per hour, and mineral / bulk material lines are under
development. Many of the planned routes cross long stretches of open
desert, including sections of the Rub' al Khali or ‘Empty Quarter’
where sand dunes reach heights in excess of 200 metres. Wind-blown and
drifting sand poses a significant threat to the integrity of a number
of aspects of rail systems. However, meteorological stations in these
remote desert areas are essentially non-existent, representing a
significant challenge to railway engineers. To fill this gap, the
authors leveraged the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model to
simulate the meteorology over nested model domains down to four
kilometre resolution over the Arabian Peninsula for a contiguous
ten-year period from 2001 through 2010. WRF model outputs were
post-processed using Weibull fitting techniques to develop
site-specific climate models for numerous locations along proposed
sections of track in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These
climate models were then integrated with results from wind tunnel
studies of sand transport, which in turn were used to develop climate
sensitive mitigation strategies. In addition to the development of
representative sand transport statistics, one-of-a-kind maps depicting
near-surface wind fields, annual sand transport rates, and vector plots
of sand transport pathways were also developed.
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