Germany’s Coastal Engineering Students Visit NCKU

April 8, 2015 | By Business Wire News

TAINAN, Taiwan

Dr. Torsten Schlurmann, Managing Director and Chair of Franzius-Institute for Hydraulic, Waterways and Coastal Engineering of Leibniz University Hannover in Germany recently led a group of 14 master students to visit Coastal Ocean Monitoring Center (COMC) in National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), southern Taiwan, according to the university.

“We came into contact with our 13-year cooperation with NCKU and brought 14 master students from our department to make an excursion experiment in Taiwan,” Schlurmann revealed in an interview taking place at COMC on March 30.

He said, “COMC run an operational basis data buoys and wave and current estimation sensors along the Taiwanese coast and they process the data in a real time and produce knowledge and data in order to provide early warning for the public.”

“The technique is world-renown here in COMC,” Schlurmann noted. “They are doing really state-of-the art scientific job even Germany can learn from the experiment given here in Taiwan,” he added.

NCKU COMC arranged a briefing and technical excursion to help the students understand ocean observation and prediction in Taiwan. COMC Director Dr. Ching-Jer Huang said, “Our center coordinates operational coastal ocean monitoring network to ensure marine safety and mitigate coastal hazards.”

Schlurmann commented, “This is a very complicated prediction technique and we still don’t have this prediction technique in Germany for the North Sea.”

Mathias Wien, a costal engineering student from the institute said that he was impressed by the prediction system operated in COMC. “I’m interested in the coastal protection work here.”

Another student Arndt Hildebrandt who had taken his first round-trip in Taiwan with the team claimed the visit was very informative.

Julia Benndorf, who is also first time in Taiwan, said that she had never been to Asia before; she said, “It’s very interesting that we’re experiencing things we never seen or eaten before, like seafood here is amazing!”

In COMC, a total of four operational systems have been developed and are under operation, including data buoy, pile station, coastal weather station and tidal station, according to Huang.

In the past 10 years, the success data rate during the typhoon is about 92%. The maximum significant wave height measured so far is 15m, which is equivalent to a maximum wave height of over 20 meters, Huang added.