Track 3: Shore Management
Track 3: Shore Management
Growth of coastal population in the last century and future projections of its trend to the next future reveal how the coastal and nearshore region will be subjected to an increasing human pressure both from an infrastructural point of view and from an environmental side. The exploitation of the coastal zone and its resources poses a great challenge in terms of sustainability and harmonized development with respect to the environment and to socio-economical needs.
CoMEM+ Track 3 provides a broad view about physical, environmental and socio-economical processes involved in the exploitation and management of the coastal zone. Future development and growth in the coastal zone require a wide approach able to analyse and evaluate different kind of impact arising from coastal and nearshore projects involving an ever-increasing number of stakeholders and conflicts. Therefore, this track addresses coastal and maritime environment management as global and integral approach including not only coastal protection and strategies and their effect on the environment but their integration with the nearshore and watershed region as well as the socio-economic effects and consequences on the population of the different adaptation and protection strategies.
A special focus is on understanding how coastal interventions can upgrade the value (social, economic and environmental) of a coastal stretch, in opposition to the general ideal that human interference must promote a negative impact on coastal zones.
Learning outcomes
After completing Track 3, the students will acquire general competences in:
- Design methods for coastal structures and shore protection.
- Physical processes responsible for coastline evolution.
- Management of planning activities from a local scale to a regional and national scale
- Socio-economical exploitation of the coastal zone (recreational and/vs production activities).
After completing Track 3, the students will have knowledge of:
- The physics of the ocean (currents and waves) and the basic processes occurring in the coastal zone (hydro- and morphodynamics).
- Basic design of coastal structures and shore protection (hard vs soft engineering, engineering with nature).
- Integral coastal management assessing the efficiency of strategies in a global spatial framework from the watershed, river mouth to shoreline evolution and risk assessment for coastal flooding and coastal erosion.
- Socio-economic effects and consequences of coastal protection and adaptation strategies, resilience and adaptation to climate changes.
- Corporate responsibility, ethics and self-consciousness in the workplace.
After completing Track 3, the students will be able to:
- Quantify natural forcing on the coastline (waves, currents, surges).
- Use numerical models for coastal hydro- and morphodynamics for different design purposes (CFD, wave phase-resolving, wave phase-averaging, short term morphodynamics, long term morphodynamics).
- Design (preliminary and detailed) coastal projects.
- Perform probabilistic risk assessment.
- Manage conflicts in the work environment.
- Assess socio-economic and social impacts of different coastal adaptation and protection strategies.