Author(s): Margaret Chen; Anne-Lise Montreuil

Linked Author(s): Margaret Chen

Keywords: Coastal safety management; Building with nature; Coastal defence; Coastal monitoring

Abstract: Belgian coastline is of 67 km long and situated in the southern part of the North Sea. With climate change and sea level rise, protecting the coastal region against storm surges and flooding is a top priority. This paper evaluates the employed coastal risk and vulnerability assessment framework and the implemented adaptive tools. Coastal protection includes measures through hard engineering with grey infrastructures such as storm return walls and storm surge barriers; and soft engineering including sand nourishments and dune strengthening. Beach nourishments frequently take place along the weak sections of the Belgian coast for the purpose of coastal safety. Although less popular, shoreface nourishments are carried out in order to provide more sand volume in the sub-aqueous. Monitoring of the pilot nourishment near Ostende took place from 2013 to 2018 in order to assess the morphological response to a combined beach and shoreface nourishment versus to a beach nourishment (at only one site on the beach). Results showed that the coastline advanced seaward immediately after the nourishments and maintained a similar position after three years. The dominant process for the beach evolution was the cross-shore transport immediately after the execution, but alongshore transport became dominant in the medium and long term. Also, shoreface nourishment has revealed to be an appropriate method to realize the growth of the sandy sea defence with sea level rise. It is evident that a better design of the coastal strategy requires timely assessment for improving adaptive capacity for integrated coastal safety management.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/978-90-833476-1-5_iahr40wc-p0740-cd

Year: 2023