H. (Hassan) Shafiei

H. (Hassan) Shafiei

Profile

Hassan Shafiei is a PhD candidate in the Coastal Engineering section of the Hydraulic Engineering department at Delft University of Technology. His research at TU Delft aims to develop a novel framework to enhance understanding of the dynamics of coastal sediment transport. He is coupling Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches to unravel coastal sediment pathways. These pathways act as directed links between sediment sinks and sources (i.e., nodes) and create a complex network. Therefore, it is required to adapt the interdisciplinary network sciences to unearth the sediment connectivity beneath the coastal waters. Consequently, it will be possible to transform sandy coasts into a complex network and vice versa. This approach will pave the way to efficiently examine wide-ranging implications of coastal management strategies by better understanding and predicting the response of the coastal systems to climate change and anthropogenic activities.  The issues will be addressed from three points of view:

  1. Holistic: By calculating the properties of the resultant sediment-connectivity networks, we can quantify important relevant metrics to sandy coasts and estuaries such as resilience and vulnerability.
  2. Local: This framework makes it possible to connect the impacts of local interventions (such as nourishment, dredging, and building/removing structures) on the whole region. Besides, synchronizations of various forcing and morphological instabilities can be investigated.
  3. Temporal: Extending the desired temporal scale expands the affected spatial scale. This project will facilitate quantifying the temporal evolution of the sediment-connectivity network, thereby identifying the tipping points at which coasts experience large changes in a short period.

The long-term objective of this project is to encourage coastal engineers and managers to recognize and investigate sandy coasts through the window of coastal sediment connectivity.

Before starting his PhD, Hassan worked as a CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) research engineer in France for over three years. During his contracts, he collaborated on a French-national (i.e., MEPELS, Model for the Evolution of Sandy Beaches and Littoral Environments) and an international (i.e., SWOT, Surface Water and Ocean Topography) project. In the MEPELS project, he contributed to developing a model to simulate the morphological evolution of sandy beaches during storm and post-storm wave conditions in a single model run (i.e., with the same model settings). Developing such a robust model has been a long-lasting challenge among coastal communities. Furthermore, he set up three numerical models in the framework of the Cal/Val phase of the SWOT mission, funded by NASA and CNES (French national space agency). The objective was to provide maps of tidal propagation in different coastal environments (i.e., vegetated channeled floodplain, bay, estuary, and intertidal flat) and climate conditions (i.e., moderate and storm surge) to be used to calibrate and validate the SWOT simulator.

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Research interests

  • Sediment connectivity
  • Coastal hydro-morphodynamics
  • Nearshore processes
  • Estuarine hydrodynamics
  • Coastal extremes and hazards
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Academic background

Hassan Shafiei obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mechanical engineering – fluid mechanics and heat transfer in two prestigious state universities securing full scholarships in Iran. The universities he studied in are located in coastal and arid environments; consequently, Hassan strived to address local water issues by researching modeling wave run-up and a desalination system, respectively. Then, to further enhance his knowledge of environmental fluid dynamics, he embarked on an exciting journey to obtain his second master's degree in France focusing on fluids in multiscale environments (from millimeters to kilometers; from sprays to coasts). He graduated in 2019 as the top student in his program.

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Expertise

Publications