The authors provide a valuable review of coastal defense megaprojects with storm surge barriers in the United States over the past decades. This review comes at an important moment: an increasing number of coastal regions are considering such solutions. Examples from the original paper are Houston, Miami, New York, Boston, and Norfolk in the US, Götenborg (Sweden), Shanghai, and Singapore (Tan 2022). A new barrier is under construction in Nieuwpoort (Belgium) (AMDK 2023). In addition, countries with existing barriers (the Netherlands, UK) are making plans to adapt, upgrade or replace surge barriers.