41 pafes, 20 figures. Other author's papers can be downloaded at http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~dutykh/International audienceFinite volume schemes are commonly used to construct approximate solutions to conservation laws. In this study we extend the framework of the finite volume methods to dispersive water wave models, in particular to Boussinesq type systems. We focus mainly on the application of the method to bidirectional nonlinear, dispersive wave propagation in one space dimension. Special emphasis is given to important nonlinear phenomena such as solitary waves interactions, dispersive shock wave formation and the runup of breaking and non-breaking long waves

After we derive the Serre system of equations of water wave theory from a generalized variational principle, we present some of its structural properties. We also propose a robust and accurate finite volume scheme to solve these equations in one horizontal dimension. The numerical discretization is validated by comparisons with analytical and experimental data or other numerical solutions obtained by a highly accurate pseudo-spectral method.