SRK Consulting's Dr Simon Lorentz and Philippa Burmeister outline how these designs are applied to the water industry.
Scientists and engineers are embracing lessons from the natural environment in designing sustainable projects as they address the growing uncertainty regarding surface water given the anticipated climate changes associated with global warming.
Understanding surface water patterns is vital to ensure the safety and effectiveness of engineering designs, according to SRK Consulting principal corporate consultant Dr Simon Lorentz, but this is becoming more difficult with climate change.
“We gain valuable design parameters from our predictive modelling, and it remains a vital tool for guiding our engineering solutions,” said Dr Lorentz. “However, Southern Africa is predominantly semi-arid, with variable frequencies and intensities of rainy and dry spells. Climate change is intensifying this variability and contributing significantly to the complexity of predicting future patterns.”
Previously the accepted method of predicting future rainfall patterns was based on past rainfall data. Climate change means that future weather conditions are likely to be significantly different to historical experience. He explained that today’s modelling tends to rely more on large-scale atmospheric models. These describe how weather patterns form on a global scale and how they are likely to change in the future.
Read the full article in Construction World
