Rivers, floods and tsunamis are often very turbulent. Conventional models of such environmental fluids are typically based on depth-averaged inviscid irrotational flow equations. We explore changing such a base to the turbulent Smagorinski large eddy closure. The aim is to more appropriately model the fluid dynamics of such complex environmental fluids by using such a turbulent closure. Large changes in fluid depth are allowed. Computer algebra constructs the slow manifold of the flow in terms of the fluid depth h and the mean turbulent lateral velocities u and v. The major challenge is to deal with the nonlinear stress tensor in the Smagorinski closure. The model integrates the effects of inertia, self-advection, bed drag, gravitational forcing and turbulent dissipation with minimal assumptions. Although the resultant model is close to established models, the real outcome is creating a sound basis for the modelling so others, in their modelling of more complex situations, can systematically include more complex physical processes.

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are used in a variety of contexts for a range of purposes including regression, feature selection and classification. To convey the basic principles of SVMs, this presentation will focus on the application of SVMs to classification. Classification (or discrimination), in a statistical sense, is supervised model creation for the purpose of assigning future observations to a group or class. An example might be determining healthy or diseased labels to patients from p characteristics obtained from a blood sample. While SVMs are widely used, they are most successful when the data have one or more of the following properties: The data are not consistent with a standard probability distribution. The number of observations, n, used to create the model is less than the number of predictive features, p. (The so-called small-n, big-p problem.) The decision boundary between the classes is likely to be non-linear in the feature space. I will present a short overview of how SVMs are constructed, keeping in mind their purpose. As this presentation is part of a double post-grad seminar, I will keep it to a maximum of 15 minutes.