Introduction on Digitalization. Rock Scour Digitalization. Digitalization of Rock Scour Computational Methods. Digital Scour Platforms. Digital Scour Applications. Digital Outlook.
Erik Bollaert graduated in 1996 in Civil Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where he performed a PhD from 1998-2002 in the field of rock scour. In 2002, he organized the International Workshop on Rock Scour at that same institute, and has been responsible for rock scour research at EPFL until 2011.
During the same period, he founded AquaVision Engineering, a company specialized in scour predictions and mitigation measures at dams and hydraulic structures, fluvial and maritime hydraulics, river restoration and reservoir sedimentation. As scour expert and hydraulic consultant, he participated to numerous projects and expertise’s worldwide, mainly in Europe, Australia, North and South America, the Middle East and Africa. In 2006, he received from the American Society of Civil engineers (ASCE) the “Karl Emil Hilgaard” Prize and the “J.C. Stevens Award” as a recognition of his work in rock scour.
Dr Bollaert is the developer of the Comprehensive Scour Model, a physics-based model for prediction of scour evolution with time in fractured rock, containing different rock break-up methods. In 2021, his continuous computational developments and project experiences have resulted in the creation of the rocsc@r® environment, a next-gen cloud-based digital platform allowing to perform 2D and 3D numerical scour predictions at hydraulic structures and proposing a worldwide database of rock scour case studies.
He is author of close to 100 scientific papers in the field and co-editor of the book Rock Scour due to Falling High-Velocity Jets (Swets & Zeitlinger 2002). He is Member of ASCE and IAHR, as well as of a large number of National Committees on Dams, and Swiss representative in the Technical Committee on Scour and Erosion of the International Committee for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).
