About Mónica Aguilera Chaves

Mónica joined Deltares at the end of 2023. Since then, she has been involved in projects regarding the prediction of the morphological changes on long-term scales of tidal basins and estuaries, mainly of the Wadden Sea and the Western Scheldt. For this purpose she makes use of models built in Delft3D 4 and Delft3D FM, and a more recent development based on a Hybrid Delft3D-ASMITA model. With the help of these tools, Mónica is able to answer questions such as how the intertidal flats will behave under different sea level rise scenarios?. The intertidal flats are important ecosystems which need to be taken care of in the view of accelerated sea level rise and land subsidence due to salt/gas extraction. Mónica contributes to Moonshots 1 and 3 with this type of work.

In the near future, Mónica will get involved in the further development and application of SedTRAILS, which helps with the visualization of sediment transport pathways. This tool can be applied in coastal management, for example to determine where and when is better to dump sediment that is dredged from an access channel to reduce its maintenance. Such work contributes to Moonshot 5. Mónica is also interested in CFD modelling. She developed a model in OpenFOAM to study wave overtopping events on a rubble mound breakwater with a crest element for her master thesis.