CE-6211

Coastal Zone Management

COASTAL PROTECTION
CONSIDERING
ECO-FRIENDLY STRUCTURES
Presented
by
Maj Nafiz Ul Ahsan
 SEQ
• Introduction
• Nature-based Coastal Defense
• Types Of Coastal Protection Structures
• Combined Coastal Protection Works
• Environmental Impacts of Coastal Defense Structures
• Building With Nature Concept (Bwn)
• Nature-based Coastal Defense in Bangladesh
• The Role of Mangroves in Coastal Risk Reduction
• Conclusions
INTRODUCTION

• Coastal urbanization and climate change has driven humans to

build artificial defenses to protect infrastructure from rising sea

level, erosion and stormier seas.

• Artificial structures are increasing rapidly in the coastal and

marine environments (ocean sprawl), resulting in a loss of

natural habitat, species diversity and ecosystem services.

INTRODUCTION
• To mitigate the impacts of ocean sprawl, the practice of eco-
engineering of coastal infrastructure has been developed.

• Novel systems such as geo systems (geo tubes, geo

containers, geo curtains) and some other systems like Reef
Balls, Aqua reef, prefabricated units, beach drainage, etc. have
gained popularity in recent years because of their simplicity in
placement and constructability, cost effectiveness and their
minimum impact on the environment.
 NATURE-BASED COASTAL DEFENSE

• Natural ecosystems, which include dunes, salt marshes,

mangroves, sea grass, shellfish and coral reefs, can provide
protection against erosion and flooding through acting as a
physical barrier to waves or creating an elevation profile that
limits inland inundation by the sea (Gedan et al. 2011).
 NATURE-BASED COASTAL DEFENSE
• Nature-based solutions will often require the restoration or
creation of new habitats (Spalding et al. 2014). Nature-based
coastal defense is a cost-effective alternative to artificial
structures as the cost of creating a habitat can be much less than
building a traditional structure (Ferrario et al. 2014).

• In addition, nature-based coastal defense can show greater

resilience to storms than artificial structures, and have the ability
to self-repair after the events.
TYPES OF COASTAL PROTECTION STRUCTURES

• Protection of the coast and the shore against the forces of waves,
currents, storm surge and flood can be performed in many ways.

• There are two kinds of protective measures for controlling

coastal erosion: Structural measures and Non- structural
measures.
TYPES OF COASTAL PROTECTION STRUCTURES

• Structures can be divided into hard and soft structures.

• Nonstructural measures include land-use controls, setting

warning lines such as the coastal setback line and coastal
construction control line to protect the coast from improper
construction, and prohibition of unreasonable sand mining and
reclamation.
HARD COASTAL STRUCTURES

• Breakwater • Revetment
• Dikes • Seawall

• Gabions • Jetties
• Levees
• Piers

• Groin
HARD COASTAL STRUCTURES

Figure . Sea wall

HARD COASTAL STRUCTURES

Figure . Bulkhead & Levees

HARD COASTAL STRUCTURES

Figure . Groins & Breakwaters

 SOFT COASTAL STRUCTURES
• Artificial reef creation • Dune regeneration

• Beach drainage • Marsh creation

• Beach nourishment • Mudflat recharge

• Beach scraping • Rock pinning

• Cliff drainage • Sand by-passing

• Cliff profiling • Underwater sand nourishment

• Cliff toe protection • Vegetation planting and/or

stabilization
SOFT COASTAL STRUCTURES

Figure . Some types of soft defenses from.

 COMBINED PROTECTION WORKS
Submerged Breakwaters
• Submerged breakwaters can reduce beach erosion and protect
coastal structures by dissipating a significant amount of wave
energy. They are coast-parallel, long or short; Submerged
breakwaters have small effect on the coastal environment and do
not spoil the view.
 COMBINED PROTECTION WORKS
Perched Beaches

• Is the construction of a low retaining sill to trap

sand and to elevate the beach above its original
level.
• Perched beaches have many of the same
qualities as natural beaches, and the submerged
sill does not intrude on the view of the waterfront.
 COMBINED PROTECTION WORKS
Artificial Headlands

• Artificial headlands are rock structures built along

the toe of eroding dunes to protect strategic
points, allowing natural processes to continue
along the remaining frontage, thus trapping littoral
drift and creating a stable embayed beach.
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF COASTAL
DEFENSE STRUCTURES
The environmental impacts of coastal protection works can be
discussed on short-term (during construction and maintenance
phase) and long-term impacts (during operational phase).
Impact can affect fauna, flora and benthic habitats on large areas, as
well as pelagic species in the immediate vicinity, destroying habitats
that play an important role in the nourishment, reproduction and
development of juveniles.
.
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF HARD
COASTAL DEFENSE STRUCTURES
• The changes imposed by hard coastal defense structures in terms
of type and magnitude can be highly based on the environmental
situation that structures are created.
• On the other hand, hard coastal structures continuously causes
normal sedimentary habitats to be lost and disturbed, include the
related collection of animals and plants, and can also disturb
nearby soft substrate benthos environments.
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF HARD
COASTAL DEFENSE STRUCTURES

• Hard defense structures can affect the coastal landscape and the
composition and performance of coastal ecosystems.
• These consequences can occur locally, but also scale up to
surrounding areas and ultimately can affect coastal ecosystems on
a regional scale.
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF SOFT
COASTAL DEFENSE STRUCTURES
• Soft coastal defense structures perform in compassion with the
natural procedures of sediment attrition, storage and transport.
• This happens in a low protection coastal system which can take
action to external forcing factors like storms and increase in sea
level.
• There is not any precise information on hand on the ecological
effect of the different kinds of soft coastal defense structures.
 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF SOFT
COASTAL DEFENSE STRUCTURES
• Long-term effects of soft coastal defenses are type adjustment or
the formation of new types, which can offer appropriate sites for a
range of related plants and animals, but this mostly leads to a
fractional loss of habitat, which can have higher ecological
importance than the newly formed ones.
 BUILDING WITH NATURE (BwN)
• Building with Nature (BwN) is an integral coastal zone
management approach that provides coastal resilience by
combining smart engineering and ecological rehabilitation, while
introducing sustainable land-use practice.
• It offers an alternative to conventional hard-infrastructure
approaches to coastal security. Instead of ‘fighting’ nature with
dams and dykes, BwN solutions work with and along the dynamics
of nature.
 BUILDING WITH NATURE (BwN)
• BwN solutions are climate-adaptive, and are often cheaper to
construct and maintain compared to static infrastructure solutions.
• The environmental benefits enable more productive and multi-
functional land-use. Local stakeholders – including disadvantaged
communities – are involved in design, construction and
maintenance of measures.
 BUILDING WITH NATURE (BwN)
The Building with Nature approach entails developing a multi-way
implementation plan to
• Understand how the bio-physical, the socioeconomic and the
institutional systems interact;
• Determine how the processes in all systems can be used and
stimulated to achieve the project-related goals, how they can be
embedded in local practice and governance and to plan the project
accordingly;
 BUILDING WITH NATURE (BwN)

• Monitor all systems during implementation, make risk-

assessments and adapt both the monitoring and implementation as
necessary during project execution (adaptive management);
• Monitor all systems after construction completion, so as to assess
the project performance, if necessary adapt its management and
harvest lessons learnt.
 BUILDING WITH NATURE (BwN)

• Five design steps have to be taken methodologically, they are:

1. Understand the three interdependent subsystems
2. Identify realistic alternatives
3. Evaluate each alternative
4. Fine-tune the selected alternative
5. Prepare the selected alternative for implementation in the next
project phase
 NATURE-BASED COASTAL DEFENSE IN
BANGLADESH
As the world’s most vulnerable country to tropical cyclones,
Bangladesh has seen its share of catastrophic storms. In the past
decade or so, Cyclones Sidr (2007), Aila (2009), Roanu (2016), Fani
(2019), and Bulbul (2019) triggered devastating storm surges, which
are major threats to lives and property in low-lying coastal areas and
can spell disaster in densely populated areas during high tide.
 NATURE-BASED COASTAL DEFENSE IN
BANGLADESH
• Mangrove forest protection is seen as a solution to protect coasts.
When cyclones strike, mangrove forests act as buffers against
storm surges by obstructing the flow of water with their roots,
husks, and leaves.
• The extent of protection that mangroves provide depends on
various factors such as the width and density of the mangrove
forest, the diameter of the mangrove tree stems and roots, the
depth of water bodies, and the tidal stage at which waves enter the
forest.
THE ROLE OF MANGROVES IN COASTAL RISK REDUCTION
 CONCLUSIONS
• Currently, it has been recognized that coastal defense requires to
be utilized in a way that takes appropriate consideration for the
overall normal procedures running on the coast. These procedures
can run on large stretches of coastline. Inappropriate coastal
defenses planning on a part of the shore can have tap on impacts
elsewhere. One of the more significant findings to emerge from
this study is that you can't stop the invasion of the sea by putting
obstacles in front.
 CONCLUSIONS
• The findings of this study suggest that , using the innovative
techniques with the soft ones (beach nourishment, sand dune
stabilization) can affect significantly on the restoration of the beach
without affecting the environment , and the habitat of aquatic
organisms are the best one.