Worldwide, communities are facing increasing flood risk, due to more frequent and intense hazards and rising exposure through more people living along coastlines and in flood plains. Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as mangroves, and riparian forests, offer huge potential for adaptation and risk reduction. The capacity of trees and forests to attenuate waves and mitigate storm damages receives massive attention, especially after extreme storm events. However, application of forests in flood mitigation strategies remains limited to date, due to lack of real-scale measurements on the performance under extreme conditions. Experiments executed in a large-scale flume with a willow forest to dissipate waves show that trees are hardly damaged and strongly reduce wave and run-up heights, even when maximum wave heights are up to 2.5 m. It was observed for the first time that the surface area of the tree canopy is most relevant for wave attenuation and that the very flexible leaves limitedly add to effectiveness. Overall, the study shows that forests can play a significant role in reducing wave heights and run-up under extreme conditions. Currently, this potential is hardly used but may offer future benefits in achieving more adaptive levee designs.

Seaport operability is key to the economic viability of ports. Metocean conditions (e.g., wind, short waves, and infragravity waves) affect this operability when certain thresholds are exceeded. This paper describes a method for the global mapping of seaport operability risk indicators using open-source metocean data. This global-scale assessment provides a geographic overview of operability risks and first-order insights into the most relevant metocean risk indicators at each location. The results show that locations around the equator and inland seas have lower operability risk than locations farther away from the equator. “Hotspots” are mainly located along the southern capes (Cape of Good Hope, Leeuwin, Horn), around the ‘Roaring Forties’, and at exposed locations along the oceans. Of the metocean parameters considered, short waves are found to be the most critical risk indicator for port operability at most locations. Using (the insights of) this study, port authorities, operators, and designers can prepare for metocean risks at an early stage and effectively respond with mitigation measures and layout adjustments to improve port operability.

To guarantee port accessibility, navigation approach channels need to be well maintained. Annual dredging efforts to maintain navigable channels may well exceed tens of millions m³ of sediment per year, which results in high recurrent costs for port operators. Quantification of expected siltation rates with process-based numerical models helps to effectively design and optimise approach channels. The setup of such models requires several assumptions and parameter settings which introduce uncertainty in model output. However, traditional Monte Carlo methods to quantify that uncertainty in model output are often too resource-intensive with current standard computer resources to be feasibly applied in coastal engineering projects such as approach channel design. Here, we use an alternative multifidelity approach to estimate the probability density function of channel siltation, at lower computational costs compared to direct Monte Carlo simulation. The idea behind this method is to map the output uncertainty of a faster, but inaccurate model to a preferred high-detailed model. The key requirement is that the faster, low-fidelity model and the detailed high-fidelity model are correlated, and that his correlation can be modelled with a probabilistic function. Since linearity of the correlation is not a requirement, the coarse-grid model can be very inaccurate but still serve as an adequate predictor of the high-fidelity model. In this study we did observe a highly nonlinear correlation, which in our case is explained by underestimation of channel siltation near the surf zone by the coarse model. In the presented multifidelity approach we adopted a combination of quasi-random Monte Carlo simulation and a non-parametric Gaussian process transfer function to estimate the uncertainty of total siltation and spatial patterns of siltation in a port approach channel. We argue that the multifidelity approach is conceptually straightforward and found that it can be used to significantly decrease the costs of probabilistic analysis; in our case we found a 85% decrease compared to direct Monte Carlo simulation. An additional advantage is that the approach allows for a trade-off between precision and efficiency by varying the number of high-fidelity model runs. Therefore, we conclude that the multifidelity framework is a potential powerful alternative for cases in which direct Monte Carlo simulation is infeasible or undesirable.

Long-term sustainable port development requires accounting for the intrinsic values of ecosystems. However, in practice, ecosystem considerations often only enter the planning and design process of ports when required by an Environmental Impact Assessment. At this late stage, most of the design is already fixed and opportunities to minimize and restore ecosystem impacts are limited. In this paper, we adopt a large-scale, ecosystem perspective on port development with the aim to identify ecosystem-based design alternatives earlier and throughout the planning and design of a port's marine infrastructure. We present a framework, termed the 'ecosystem-based port design hierarchy' (EPDH), to identify ecosystem-based alternatives at four hierarchical design levels: 1) alternatives to port developments, 2) port site selection, 3) port layout design, and 4) design of structures and materials. In applying the EPDH framework retrospectively to a case study of port expansion in Tema, Ghana, we establish that ecosystem considerations played only a limited role in identifying and evaluating alternatives at all four design levels in the case study, whereas more eco-friendly alternatives in terms of port layouts, structures, and materials are identified using the EPDH framework. This reveals that opportunities for ecosystem-friendly port designs may have been missed and demonstrates the need for and the potential added value of our framework. The framework can assist practitioners in earlier and wider identification of ecosystem-based alternatives for a port's marine infrastructure in future seaport developments and, hence, represents an important step towards more sustainable port designs.

In process-based numerical models, reducing the amount of input parameters, known as input reduction (IR), is often required to reduce the computational effort of these models and to enable long-term, ensemble predictions. Currently, a comprehensive performance assessment of IR-methods is lacking, which hampers guidance on selecting suitable methods and settings in practice. In this study, we investigated the performance of 10 IR-methods and 36 subvariants for wave climate reduction to model the inter-annual evolution of nearshore bars. The performance of reduced wave climates is evaluated by means of a brute force simulation based on the full climate. Additionally, we tested how the performance is affected by the number of wave conditions, sequencing, and duration of the reduced wave climate. We found that the Sediment Transport Bins method is the most promising method. Furthermore, we found that the resolution in directional space is more important for the performance than the resolution in wave height. The results show that a reduced wave climate with fewer conditions applied on a smaller timescale performs better in terms of morphology than a climate with more conditions applied on a longer timescale. The findings of this study can be applied as initial guidelines for selecting input reduction methods at other locations, in other models, or for other domains.

Namhangjin beach is protected by multiple submerged breakwaters (SBWs) which were built to protect the ~4 km long sandy beach. A coastline model (UNIBEST) was used to investigate the long term effect of the SBW structures on the beach. The model computes long-term shoreline changes due to coastal structures as a result of the strong longshore sediment transport gradients at the structures. Bathymetry data of the shoreface and nearshore profiles were obtained from a field survey, while wave conditions from offshore WAM hindcast (Wave Modeling Group) were transformed towards the nearshore with the Delft3D+SWAN modelling system. Local wave sheltering by the SBWs was included in the wave model. A situation with and without the SBWs was modelled. A rapid adjustment of the shoreline was observed in the model as a result of the wave conditions in the first two years. After that, the shoreline shape stabilized without significant changes both for the situation with and without SBWs. A smooth curved coastline shape was obtained in the model without SBWs, while the model with SBWs shows a similar overall shoreline shape with undulations of the shoreline shape behind the breakwaters. A similar undulating shoreline was observed in the Sept-2013 imagery at Namhangjin beach. The local accretion behind the SBWs may induce some erosion in the lee area of the SBWs, causing distortions of the shoreline shape. Most sediment accreted at the first SBW (i.e. the northern most SBW where alongshore transport from the North was trapped), while the coastline change rate gradually decreased towards the South. The effectiveness of the SBWs at the considered shoreline section for maintaining the shoreline is somewhat ambiguous as local areas with accretion or erosion are present with respect to the situation without the breakwaters. The results show that multiple SBWs need to be carefully designed to protect beaches as local distortions of the shoreline shape may be present directly downdrift from the structures.

A prototype harbour design toolbox has been developed, with a Graphical User Interface, incorporating simple model instruments to rapidly assess the impact of a harbour construction on a coastal environment, such as expected siltation rates and impact on the coastline evolution. The toolbox can be useful for different stakeholders, particularly in the early phases of a harbour development project, to explore order of magnitude impacts, relevant design parameters and dominant processes. This paper will set out the current status of the harbour design toolbox and investigate the benefits of use for specific stakeholders. The ambition is to further extend the harbour design toolbox towards an integral coastal design tool, facilitating the implementation of other type of interventions and linking to other disciplines such as marine ecology and navigation. It is intended that the integral coastal design tool will facilitate a multi-disciplinary approach to aid in the feasibility, design, construction or maintenance phase of coastal development project.

A study of siltation processes was undertaken for the harbour of Harlingen in the Netherlands, to investigate their relative importance for potential sedimentation. Three distinct harbour siltation processes were studied: tidal filling and emptying, horizontal eddy circulation in the harbour mouth and density driven vertical circulation. The Harlingen case, with its complex harbour geometry, seemed a promising candidate for a very early pilot application of D-Flow Flexible Mesh, a new hydrodynamic simulation code. Objective of this paper therefore was to investigate its performance, flexibility and efficiency by means of a qualitative comparison with an existing calibrated Delft3D curvilinear model. It was found that the flexible mesh allows for a more precise distribution of high resolution grid cells and capturing of complex geometries using a local triangular network. Moreover, the accuracy of the model was in line with existing Delft3D results. The tide and density driven current were found to be the main contributors to the siltation in Harlingen. Concluding, the applied research method combined with the Flexible Mesh approach look like a promising tool to help identify possible mitigating measures against harbour siltation problems.