of waves and on the coastal geometry and topography [7]. Several previous studies have
been devoted to predict waves propagation and determine the height of run-up along the
coastlines [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. Synolakis [19,20] performed theoretical
and experimental study to analyze the evolution of non-breaking and breaking solitary waves
and approximated the wave maximum run-up, as well as the breaking criterion when the
wave climbs up the sloping breach. Madsen and Mei [21] investigated the transformation of
the solitary wave over an uneven bottom topography and showed that the wave height rises
depending on the slope and its initial height. Kaplan [22] studied the evolution of periodic
waves and derived an empirical formula for wave maximum run-up over a sloping beach.
The non-linear shallow water equations are among the commonly used models to describe
the propagation of waves over variable bottom topography. These equations are derived from
a depth-averaged integration of the 3D incompressible Navier–Stokes equations under the
hydrostatic pressure assumption [23]. They are widely used for modeling water flows in
lakes, rivers, and coastal areas [24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. Titov and Synolakis [31] tested
the efficiency of the shallow water equations for modeling the evolution of breaking and non-
breaking solitary waves on sloping beaches based on data from laboratory experiments. Delis
et al. [13] developed a numerical model based on shallow water equations and investigated
its accuracy to simulate long waves. Hu et al. [32] used nonlinear shallow water equations
to perform numerical simulations of wave overtopping of coastal structures. Brocchini and
Dodd [33] modeled nearshore flows using nonlinear shallow water equations and analyzed
the interdependence between physical phenomena, model equations and numerical methods.
Various numerical methods have been developed for solving the shallow water equations
modeling flows over variable bottom topography [34,35,36,37,38,39]. The finite volume
technique is one of the most popular tools used for solving the system of shallow water
equations due to its capability to conserve mass and momentum, and accurately computes
solutions with sharp gradients. Central-upwind finite volume methods are among the most
efficient numerical tools developed for solving the system of conservation laws [40,41]. The
central-upwind schemes are Godunov-type free Riemann solver, which are based on the
information obtained from the local speeds of wave propagation to approximate the nu-
merical fluxes at the cell interfaces. Many extensions of these schemes have been proposed
for the system of shallow water flow due to their robustness, high resolution and simplicity
[42,43,44,45,25,46,47]. Furthermore, central-upwind schemes can be well-balanced and
positivity preserving, that is, they accurately compute stationary steady solutions of the
model and maintain the non-negativity of the computed water depth at the discrete level
[48,49,50].
In this study, the depth-averaged 2-D shallow water equations are used for modeling
waves propagation and waves run-up at the coastlines. The source terms due to variable
bottom topography and bed friction effect are taken into account. The shallow water system
is solved using an unstructured finite volume method based on central-upwind techniques
[50,41]. We used efficient semi-implicit techniques for the friction term and a well-balanced
discretization for the source term due to variable topography. Beside the well-balanced
property of the lack at rest, we established that the numerical scheme preserves nontrivial
steady-state solutions over a slanted surface. Furthermore, a piecewise linear approximation
2