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THE VISUAL BEACH NUMERICAL MODEL: A DIAGNOSTIC AND PROGNOSTIC MODELING APPROACH TO ACHIEVING US BEACHES AESTHETIC AND PUBLIC HEALTH PROTECTION
Impact/Purpose:
A main objective of this task is to combine empirical and physical mechanisms in a model, known as Visual Beach, that
- is user-friendly
- includes point and non-point sources of contamination
- includes the latest bacterial decay mechanisms
- incorporates real-time and web-based ambient and atmospheric and aquatic conditions
- and has a predictive capability of up to three days to help avert potential beach closures.
Description:
Under the BEACH Act of 2000, EPA has committed to a program to monitor beach water quality and develop strategies, including modeling, for timely notification of the public when bacterial contamination poses a risk to bathers. EPA's goal is to manage 100% of significant public beaches by 2008, with the additional goal of making them swimmable 100% of the time. Relatively simple empirical methodologies based on important and common predictors, notably rainfall, are currently used for site-specific data analysis and prediction. Under this task such methods will be automated with software accessible to most small offices concerned with issuing beach advisories and closures. More sophisticated model development is also justified in part by the recognition that fewer than 50% of beach closings are significantly related to rainfall events (Dufour, personal communication). Thus, in collaboration with other organizations and consistent with the Act, both simple statistical techniques and complex hydrodynamical modeling approaches will be developed.