Ms Joana Van-Nieuwkoop-McCall
Associate Research Fellow
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Telephone: +44 (0) 1326 371837
Room: Renewable Energy Laboratory, Room 3.030 Daphne DuMaurier building
My primary research interests lie in the areas of wave modelling, forecasting and hindcasting waves and resource assessment for applications for marine renewable energy.
I am currently funded by a Technology Strategy Board (TSB) project which supports the research and development of the Ocean Power and Technologies PB500 Wave Energy Converter with a view to deployment at Wave Hub. Wave Hub is a seabed ‘socket’ and a cable connection to the electricity grid to test wave energy devices off the North Cornwall coast, aiming to enable the development of small arrays of wave devices.
My part in this project is to provide advice on the Cornish wave climate. I have set up and validated a wave model in SWAN for the Cornish coast. With this model I carried out a 22-year hindcast focussing on the Wave Hub area, the Falmouth Bay area and the Scilly Isles. The 22-year hindcast provides a good dataset for wave resource assessments and weather window analyses.
Furthermore, I use the wave model to make a daily 3-day wave forecast for the Cornish coast. The forecast is validated daily by realtime measurement data from two PRIMaRE wave buoys, deployed near the Wave Hub, and four Coastal Channel Observatory buoys. At this point the forecast gives a reasonably good prediction for the coming 3 days, but I am also investigating a way to improve the wave forecast by integrating the available wave measurements in the prediction process. The daily forecast will help to plan device deployment and future maintenance operations and as a consequence decrease the costs of offshore operations.
My background lies in Civil Engineering. I did a three year B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. After that I continued in Delft with a 2 year M.Sc. program with a specialization in Fluid dynamics and Coastal Engineering, for which I researched landslide tsunami generation. After my studies I worked three years for the engineering consultancy company Witteveen+Bos and for a year for the research institute Deltares, both based in the Netherlands. Besides project management, I gained experience with various programs/model tools (e.g. SWAN, Matlab, Delft3D, OpenFoam, Finel - Finite Element model, ArcGIS). In particular, I did various research studies with the wave model SWAN, helping the further development of the model in complex areas like estuaries and tidal inlets.
