3D CFD Simulations of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods Using OpenFOAM

This document outlines the core elements of the workflow used in Work Package 3 of the project Future Glacial Lakes in High Mountain Asia – Modeling and Risk Analysis (GLAMoR).
It supports the results presented in:

Furian and Sauter (2025)
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) [citation pending]

⚠️ About this Guide

This is not a fully executable, step-by-step script.
Instead, it provides a structured overview with code snippets, commands, and explanatory notes for key steps involved in:

• Preparing digital elevation data
• Delineating glacial lakes
• Generating 3D meshes
• Defining breach scenarios
• Setting up and running hydrodynamic simulations in OpenFOAM

🧩 Required Input Data

To apply this workflow, the following input data are required:

• A digital elevation model (DEM) with sufficient resolution (e.g., ALOS PALSAR at 12.5 m)
• Vector outlines of the glacial lakes (e.g., shapefiles) serving as GLOF origins
• lake bathymetry data (or ice-thickness data for calculating the lake volume)

🛠 Software Requirements

The following software stack has been tested and is recommended for running the workflow:

| Software | Version | Purpose | |--------------|---------|------------------------------------------| | OpenFOAM | 2112 | 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation | | ParaView | 5.11.0 | Visualization and postprocessing | | Python | 3.8 | Preprocessing and postprocessing scripts | | C++ | 11 | Required for OpenFOAM solvers |

💡 The code is written in both Python and C++.

💻 System Setup and HPC Access

While small test cases may be run locally, access to a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster is highly recommended for full-scale simulations. When using a Windows setup, the following tools are helpful:

• PuTTY – for secure SSH terminal access to the remote server
• WinSCP – for file transfer between the local machine and the server

Make sure that OpenFOAM is correctly installed and configured on the HPC system.

Repository

Code and materials are hosted at:
👉 https://github.com/cryotools/GLOF-simulations

For background on the overall GLAMoR project, see:
🌐 https://hu-berlin.de/glamor

📄 Licensing and Contributions

This code is free to use and adapt for non-commercial purposes.
If you use this workflow, please cite the original work, e.g., for version 1.0:

Furian, W. and Sauter, T. (2025): cryotools/GLOF-modeling: 3D CFD GLOF modeling using OpenFOAM, version: v1.0.

You are welcome to contribute: - Fork the repository - Commit your modifications - Submit a pull request

📬 Contact

For questions or collaboration inquiries, please contact:
W. Furian, ORCID: 0000-0001-7834-2500