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The Centre for Research on Environmental, Coastal and Hydrological Engineering (CRECHE) aims to be an internationally recognised centre of excellence for applied research in the fields of Environmental, Coastal and Hydrological Engineering, and to develop, disseminate and apply state-of-the-art knowledge for solving environmental problems. Creche is made up of the following research units:

Environmental Engineering group

Led by Prof Cristina Trois and includes Dr Elena Friedrich (Lecturer – PhD student), Dr Ntlibi Matete (Lecturer) and several graduate students. In 2007 CRECHE-Enviro launched the ZETA research portfolio that focuses on Zero waste, energy recovery, treatment of landfill emissions and awareness through education. This research portfolio is supported by local government, the World Bank and NRF.
 
Current research in Environmental Engineering includes the following areas:
  • Waste management
  • Landfill emissions control, management and treatment Leachate/biogas characterization and treatment Waste-to-Energy and Carbon emissions reduction ZERO WASTE
  • Waste water treatment and land remediation
  • Metals removal using Permeable Reactive Barriers Constructed wetlands
  • Denitrification using organic substrates as a carbon source

Estuary and Coastal research group

Led by Prof Derek Stretch and includes several graduate students. Current research includes the following areas:
  • Computational fluid dynamicsEstuary hydrodynamics (e.g. St. Lucia Estuary)
  • Coastal water quality monitoring and pollution dispersion modeling
  • Coastal Engineering: wind, waves and cross-current modeling, sediment transport
  • The multi-disciplinary research on estuaries is supported by WRC, WWF, NRF and is conducted in collaboration with an estuarine research group in the School of Biological & Conservation Sciences at UKZN.

Satellite Applications and Hydrology Group

Led by Prof Geoff Pegram (Emeritus) and includes Dr Scott Sinclair (Post-doc), and several graduate students. Ms Blight collaborates with a research group in the Agricultural Engineering and Environmental Hydrology at UKZN. CRECHE-SAHG focuses on research relating to the application of remote sensing to Hydrology. The group has worked (often in collaboration with the SA Weather Service) on stochastic modeling of radar rainfall fields, stochastic now-casting of rainfall fields measured by radar and satellite, combining satellite, radar and gauge data to yield the ‘best’ daily rainfall fields over southern Africa, catchment modeling for flood forecasting, and exploring the feasibility of remote sensing of soil moisture in the region.
 
Current research within CRECHE-SAHG covers the following topics:
  • Operational Hydrology
  • Environmental Hydrology (rainfall/runoff and pollution transport modeling) Reliability modeling of large water resources systems
  • Multi-site time series modeling
  • Hydrological data repair and infilling
  • Flood studies
  • Rainfall/runoff modeling and forecasting
  • Flood routing
  • Linear system modeling
  • Historical flood analysis
  • Space-time modeling and forecasting of rain fields.