Assessing novel solutions for coastal flooding and erosion

Assessing novel solutions for mitigating coastal erosion and flooding

Supervisors

• Ryan Lowe
  Professor, Oceans Graduate School

• Scott Draper
  Associate Professor, Oceans Graduate School

• Justin Geldard
  PhD Candidate, Oceans Graduate School

• Marco Ghisalberti
  Senior Lecturer, Oceans Graduate School

Project Description

Traditionally, engineering strategies to manage flood risk along coastlines have relied on 'hard' on ‘gray’ engineering infrastructure, such as seawalls and breakwaters, that often have numerous undesirable consequences on a coastal zone (e.g. damaging coastal ecosystems, disrupting natural coastal processes, shifting problems to other adjacent coastal regions, and devaluing coastal amenities, including aesthetics). There is a growing movement internationally to adopt new “green” or “hybrid” approaches that use natural features of a coastal ecosystem to provide equivalent costal flood defense; this can for example, include planting or restoration of aquatic vegetation (e.g. seagrasses and salt marsh) and use of natural or artificial reefs. Successful nature-based flood defense projects can thus protect coastlines while having numerous additional co-benefits: such as enhancing coastal ecosystems, improving coastal water quality, providing habitat for marine species, and improving coastal aesthetics.

The Swan River continues to experience regular flooding and erosion over many parts of its foreshore, and combined with the unique ecosystem it supports, it is an ideal candidate for considering nature-based flood defenses as part of possible future coastal management interventions.  As part of Riverlab, this project will identify suitable site(s) in the Swan River for trialing new coastal protection solutions through field observations, propose designs options, test these designs in UWA’s large scale wave flume, and apply these results to predict coastal flooding and erosion mitigation at the site.