Various coastal regions around Northern Ireland

Vertical velocity of the water column (currents); Horizontal velocity of the water column (currents)

Current meters; inapplicable

In 1986 the Department of the Environment adopted a policy that all new marine outfalls would be designed to conform to the standards required under the EC Bathing Water Directive. As a consequence the WRC were awarded a contract to undertake a modelling exercise of various outfall locations around the province. WRC commissioned the hydrodynamic models and the validation of the models was executed by staff at the then Industrial Science Division. The data consisted of depth averaged information collected from a survey vessel tracking various sets of drogue floats which were released at various points. The floats were designed to be acted upon by currents at certain depths from the surface down to four metres. Once collected the data would be collated and processed by the site's computer and the model's accuracy was duly validated or not depending upon the relative agreement between the real float data and 'imaginary' float data. The output from the hydrodynamic model was interfaced with a dispersion-type model which simulated the dispersion of bacteria from domestic sewage discharged from any single or multiple point source into the waterway. The model could then run any number of times with the possibility of changing a number of important parameters such as bacterial T90 values or sunlight and temperature conditions.

Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Water Management Unit
17 Antrim Road
Lisburn
County Antrim
BT28 3AL
United Kingdom