A New Framework for Estuarine and Coastal Modeling to Monitor Water Security in a Changing Climate

Managing water resources efficiently, ensuring water quality, and avoiding water resource degradation from adverse effects of climate change and natural disasters are keys to ensuring water security for coastal regions. To propose a comprehensive sustainable approach to address water security challenges, relevant stakeholders need to understand the water-related system, i.e., how and why the system is evolving and how climate change and human interventions may impact that evolution. Therefore, hydraulic engineers, modelers, and managers need expert local knowledge, proof, and some predictive tools. This paper introduces a new framework, summarizes, and describes different mathematical models to simulate, analyze, and understand the changes in the water resources systems, particularly focusing on eco-morphodynamics. The techniques discussed range from analytical, conceptual, and dynamic system models and the Monte Carlo method to detailed 2D and 3D numerical models. The principal types of these techniques and some practical examples illustrating how these models can be applied in the water resources engineering field are discussed.