Sustainable development of land reclamations and shorelines full scale experiments as a driver for public - private innovations

With 80% of the world's population living in lowland urban areas by 2050, sea levels gradually rising and societal demands on the quality of living increasing, sustainable development of coastal zones becomes increasingly urgent as well as complex. Modern strategies for the design and implementation of measures for infrastructure development, coastal protection and other functions adopt the concept of Building with Nature to handle these challenges. Recently, two full scale experiments were implemented to assess the benefits of the this approach for coastal development. The Sand Motor pilot project addresses the potential concentrated nourishments on the basis of a 21 million m3 shore nourishment at the Delfland coast in the Netherlands. This unprecedented experiment aims to protect the hinterland from flooding by letting natural processes distribute sand over shoreface, beach and dunes, thus constituting a climate-robust and environmentally friendly way of coastal protection. The second experiment addresses the concept of seabed landscaping in sand extraction sites, which aims to add ecological value to the sand borrow areas after construction. Both pilots have been monitored since their completion in 2010/2011 and will be monitored extensively in the coming years

Enhancing Eco-Engineering of Coastal Infrastructure with Eco-Design: Moving from Mitigation to Integration

Eco-design aims to enhance eco-engineering practices of coastal infrastructure projects in support of ecological functions before these projects are developed and implemented. The principle is to integrate eco-engineering concepts in the early phases of project design. Although ecological losses are inherent in any construction project, the goal of eco-design is to introduce environmental considerations upfront during technical design choices, and not just afterwards when evaluating the need for reduction or compensatory mitigation. It seeks to reduce the negative impacts of marine infrastructure by introducing a new reflexive civil engineering approach. It requires a valuation of nature with the aim of reducing impacts by incorporating intelligent design and habitat-centered construction. The principle advocated in this paper is to design coastal infrastructures, at micro- to macro-biological scales, using a combination of fine and large scale physical and chemical modifications to hard substrates, within the scope of civil engineering requirements. To this end, we provide a brief introduction to the factors involved in concrete-biota interactions and propose several recommendations as a basis to integrate ecology into civil engineering projects, specifically addressed to concrete

Als de duinen breken: Once the Dunes Breach

Uittree red

Als de duinen breken: Once the Dunes Breach

Uittree redeAfscheidsrede, Uitgesproken bij het afscheid van het ambt van hoogleraar Kustwaterbouwkunde aan de Technische Universiteit DelftCoastal Engineerin