Professor Onno Bokhove

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Chair

Geophysical fluid dynamics (GFD) concerns the fluid motions of the atmosphere and ocean, and environmental dynamics such as river and coastal flows. This includes river floods, beach erosion due to breaking waves, tides, and weather prediction.

My particular interest is in the applied mathematics of environmantal fluid dynamics: design and testing of laboratory configurations for validation of mathematical models, computational techniques for PDEs (DGFEM), Hamiltonian fluid dynamics, and hydraulic solutions of hyperbolic systems. I also investigate geological and industrial problems related to GFD. Examples are safety of underground storage sites due to break throughs (of volcanic magma) and granular flows in blast furnaces.

Note that in Leeds, I am no longer investigating floods or flood-mitigation, except (potentially) in some student or international projects.



Work on flood mitigation and demonstration by:
• Pullan, Bokhove 2026: Creating story lines on floods: relating climate-change uplift to (extreme) experienced and future flooding events. Online discussion/Subm. NHESS.
• Knotters, Bokhove, Lamb, Poortvliet 2024: How to cope with uncertainty monsters in flood risk management? In press. Water Prisms.
• OB, Kelmanson, Piton, Tacnet 2024: Visualising Flood Frequency, Flood Volume and Mitigation of Extreme Events. Springer volume "UK Success Stories in Industrial Mathematics". 6pp. Researchgate & my www
• Exploring Wetropolis, an extreme flood and rainfall demonstrator: YouTube video for everyone (link) Visualising Flood Frequency, Flood Volume and Mitigation of Extreme Events
• Bokhove, Kelmanson, Hicks, Kent 2021/2022: UK Research Excellence Framework Impact Case Study "Flood mitigation: from outreach demonstrator to a graphical cost-effectiveness diagnostic for policy makers".
• O. Bokhove 2021: On Communicating Cost-Effectiveness of Flood-Mitigation Schemes pdf-link at bototm. ESREL conference Angers, France. "... Three realistic cases -from the UK, Slovenia and France- will be reviewed, including insights on dealing with uncertainty and on the communication of multiple benefits of Nature-Based Solutions, followed by a Socratic-method dialogue." (... the latter dialogue was set up for our secret admirers.)
• O. Bokhove, M.A. Kelmanson, T. Kent 2020: Evidence entitled A new tool for communicating cost-effectiveness of flood-mitigation schemes for the UK Government Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee inquiry into flooding.
• OB, Hicks, Zweers, Kent 2020: Wetropolis extreme rainfall and flood demonstrator: from mathematical design to outreach and research. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 24, 2483-2503. Extra: EarthArxiv 2019 & GitHub design link.
• OB, Kent, Kelmanson, Piton, Tacnet 2020: A cost-effectiveness protocol for flood-mitigation plans based on Leeds’ Boxing Day 2015 floods. Water 12(3), 652. 2018 preprint.
• OB, Kent, Kelmanson, Piton, Tacnet 2019: Communicating (nature-based) solutions using flood-excess volume for three UK and French river floods. River Research and Applications 35, 1402-1414. 2018 preprint with a cunning extra River Don 2007 flood example.
• OB, Kent, Kelmanson 2018: Using flood-excess volume to show that upscaling beaver dams for protection against extreme floods proves unrealistic. EarthArxiv, 10pp, with a comment by J. Rand in the New Scientist.
Please ask about Postdoc, PhD or related MSc projects, some examples are:
• Modelling and validating a novel wave-energy device.
• PhD: Dredging the depths of mathematics: dynamic beaches and sand bars (with data validation and applications in coastal hazard mitigation)