Multi-Scale Mathematics for Mitigating Severe Environmental Events

伴随着暴雨和强风的恶劣天气是最近陆地和沿海洪水泛滥的原因，也是英国海岸沿着强烈海滩和悬崖侵蚀的原因。2012-2013年和2013-2014年的冬天，英国都发生了严重的环境灾害。预测强降雨和风暴并利用其预测河流洪水和风暴潮以及海岸侵蚀，是一项重大挑战。准确预测降雨量和降雨量，风暴潮的高度以及海浪和风袭击海岸线的方向是这一挑战的核心。气候变化加剧了这一挑战和其他环境挑战，需要紧急加以解决。正如政府间气候变化专门委员会的最新报告所证实的那样，海平面上升和风暴强度加在一起很可能导致更多的海滩和悬崖以及河口的海岸侵蚀。然而，同样明显的是，仍然存在相当大的不确定性，为了应对预测和减轻严重环境事件所带来的挑战，需要解决许多科学和技术问题。它们具有共同的要素：涉及广泛的空间和时间尺度的现象;连续和离散实体之间的相互作用;需要从确定性预测转向概率性预测，从预测转向控制;极端事件的定性和取样;通过过滤将模型与观测结果合并;模型简化和参数估计。他们还共享一个双重需要改进的数学模型和改进的数值方法，以适应高性能的计算机架构。由于所有这些方面都以数学为基础，因此很明显，新的数学方法可以为应对严重事件带来的挑战做出重大贡献。为了实现这一目标，具有相关专业知识的数学家与环境科学家和环境研究的最终用户密切互动至关重要。目前，联合王国在这方面的互动有限。因此，我们建议建立一个新的网络-数学预见-这将在应用数学界的研究人员与环境科学界和政府机构的选定战略领域的研究人员之间建立牢固的联系。为实现我们的目标而提出的活动包括：（i）三次大会，（ii）三次由利益相关者提出挑战的行业研讨会，（iii）关于数学问题的重点研讨会，（iv）推广项目，其中以可访问和概念性的方式向公众展示所开发的科学，（v）可行性项目，以及（vi）为用户团体举办研讨会，向政府机构传播网络进展。

Severe weather, with heavy rainfall and strong winds, has been the cause of recent dramatic land and coastal flooding, and of strong beach and cliff erosion along the British coast. Both the winters of 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 have seen severe environmental disasters in the UK. The prediction of severe rainfall and storms and its use to forecast river flooding and storm surges, as well as coastal erosion, poses a significant challenge. Uncertainties in the prediction of where and how much precipitation will fall, how high storm surges will be and from which direction waves and wind will attack coast lines, lie at the heart of this challenge. This and other environmental challenges are exacerbated by changing climate and need to be addressed urgently. As the latest IPCC reports confirms, sea level rise and storm intensity combined are very likely to cause more coastal erosion of beaches and cliffs, and of estuaries. However, it is also clear that there remains considerable uncertainty.To address the challenges posed by the prediction and mitigation of severe environmental events, many scientific and technical issues need to be tackled. These share common elements: phenomena involving a wide range of spatial and temporal scales; interaction between continuous and discrete entities; need to move from deterministic to probabilistic prediction, and from prediction to control; characterisation and sampling of extreme events; merging of models with observations through filtering; model reduction and parameter estimation. They also share a dual need for improved mathematical models and for improved numerical methods adapted to high-performance computer architectures. Since all these aspects are underpinned by mathematics, it is clear that new mathematical methods can make a major contribution to addressing the challenges posed by severe events. To achieve this, it is crucial that mathematicians with the relevant expertise interact closely with environmental scientists and with end-users of environmental research. At present, the UK suffers from limited interactions of this type. We therefore propose to establish a new Network - Maths Foresees - that will forge strong ties between researchers in the applied mathematics community with researchers in selected strategic areas of the environmental science community and governmental agencies. The activities proposed to reach our objectives include:(i) three general assemblies,(ii) three mathematics-with-industry style workshops, in which the stakeholders put forward challenges,(iii) focussed workshops on mathematical issues,(iv) outreach projects in which the science developed is demonstrated in an accessible and conceptual way to the general public,(v) feasibility projects, and(vi) workshops for user groups to disseminate the network progress to government agencies.