Water Quality and Hydrodynamic Modeling Software

Estuarine, Coastal Ocean Model with Sediment Transport is a 3D hydrodynamic and sediment transport model developed by our modeling staff starting from the Princeton Ocean Model for application to marine and freshwater water bodies. The ECOMSED model calculates water movement (flow, depth, velocity, dispersion) due to river inflow, tides, meteorological forcings and includes salinity, temperature and tracer parameters. In addition, the ECOMSED model is also used to complete cohesive and non-cohesive sediment transport calculations for contaminated and clean sediment investigations. 

The movement and mixing of wastes introduced into marine and freshwater environments are controlled by the circulation characteristics of the water body. To predict the circulation characteristics, the hydrodynamic transport processes must be defined by various hydrographical (runoff), meteorological (surface wind, heating/cooling), adjacent open ocean (large-ocean circulation offshore), astronomical (tides) and internal (gradients) forcing mechanisms. Our modeling staff have developed and applied steady-state, 2D and 3D time dependent models to compute hydrodynamic circulation. In recent years, scientists and engineers have come to rely on hydrodynamic circulation to provide the necessary ingredients (i.e., currents and dispersion) for use in water quality modeling, thermal evaluations and sediment transport studies.

The development of ECOMSED has its origins in the mid-1980’s with the creation of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) followed by an upgraded version called ECOM for shallow water environments such as rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal oceans. In the mid-1990s, concepts for sediment resuspension and settling developed by W. Lick at the University of California, Santa Barbara were incorporated within the ECOM modeling framework that resulted in the current version, ECOMSED.