Prediction Tool From MIT Gives Warning About Rogue Waves

We have all seen rogue waves in movies and TV shows, they are large and spontaneous surface waves that occur far out in open water and can be extremely dangerous even for bigger ships. Up until now predicting such waves required supercomputers but with the new technology devised by the good guys from MIT the process becomes much simpler. Themis Sapsis, the American Bureau of Shipping Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT along with former post doctoral student Will Cousins have published a report in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics which discusses their prediction tool for rogue waves.


The team explains that the open ocean is a complex system with changing data points. In order to accurately predict rogue waves which are rare events, scientists have to take every wave into account and generate a high-resolution picture of the sea state and find out if any waves are suspicious. This detailed approach to solve equations for each and every wave and their interactions with surrounding waves often requires super computers thus making it infeasible for small scale implementation. The calculations are slow and cannot be carried out on a portable device such as a laptop. This is the problem that the Sapsis and Cousins duo wanted to solve.

The method developed by Sapsis and Cousins consists of ships and offshore units using high-resolution scanning technologies such as LIDAR and radar to measure the surrounding waves. They have established two parameters to predict if a wave is about to do rogue, the length and height of waves. Once the computer has the data from the LIDAR and radar, the algorithm developed by the duo will calculate the possibility of a rogue wave and send a warning two or three minutes before the wave strikes. While two or three minutes aren’t enough to turn around the ship, it warns the sailors to brace for impact.


Source: Rogue wave ahead | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology