JSG T.35

JSG T.35: Advanced numerical methods in physical geodesy

Chair: Robert Čunderlík (Slovakia)
Affiliation:Commission and GGOS

Introduction

Advanced numerical methods and high performance computing (HPC) facilities provide new opportunities in many applications in geodesy. The goal of this JSG is to apply such numerical methods to solve various problems of physical geodesy, mainly gravity field modelling, processing satellite observations, nonlinear data filtering or others. It focuses on a further development of approaches based on discretization numerical methods like the finite element method (FEM), finite volume method (FVM) and boundary element method (BEM) or the meshless collocation techniques like the method of fundamental solutions (MFS) or singular boundary method (SOR). Such approaches allow gravity field modelling in spatial domain while solving the geodetic boundary-value problems (GBVPs) directly on the discretized Earth’s surface. Their parallel implementations and large-scale parallel computations on clusters with distributed memory allow high-resolution numerical modelling.

The JSG is also open to new innovative approaches based for example on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, spectral FEM, advection-diffusion equations, or similar approaches of scientific computing. It is also open for researchers dealing with classical approaches of gravity field modelling like the spherical or ellipsoidal harmonics that are using HPC facilities to speed up their processing of enormous amount of input data. This includes large-scale parallel computations on massively parallel architectures as well as heterogeneous parallel computations using graphics processing units (GPUs).

Objectives

• Design the FEM, BEM and FVM numerical models for solving GBVPs with the oblique derivative boundary conditions.
• Develop algorithms for a discretization of the Earth’s surface based on adaptive refinement procedures (the BEM approach).
• Develop algorithms for an optimal construction of 3D unstructured meshes above the Earth’s topography (the FVM or FEM approaches).
• Design numerical models based on MFS or SBM for processing the GOCE gravity gradients in spatial domain.
• Design algorithms for 1D along track filtering of satellite data, e.g., from the GOCE satellite mission.
• Develop numerical methods for nonlinear diffusion filtering of data on the Earth’s surface based on solutions of the nonlinear heat equations.
• Investigate innovative approaches based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques, spectral FEM or advection-diffusion equations.
• Apply parallel algorithms using MPI procedures.
• Apply large-scale parallel computations on clusters with distributed memory.

Program of activities

• Active participation in major geodetic conferences.
• Working meetings at international symposia.
• Organization of a conference session.

Membership

Róbert Čunderlík (Slovakia), chair
Petr Holota (Czech Republic)
Michal Kollár (Slovakia)
Marek Macák (Slovakia)
Matej Medľa (Austria)
Karol Mikula (Slovakia)
Zuzana Minarechová (Slovakia)
Otakar Nesvadba (Czech Republic)
Yoshiyuki Tanaka (Japan)
Robert Tenzer (Hong Kong)
Zhi Yin (Germany)