ABSTRACT
Coastal engineering involves planning, designing and building measures in the coastal zone in order to protect assets from coastal erosion and/or flooding. Coastal erosion involves coastal recession or beach lowering, whilst flooding involves the inundation of low-lying areas due to seawater inundation or wave overtopping. Intervention can take the form of ‘hard’ structures (e.g. seawalls), or softer approaches which attempt to have a beneficial influence on coastal processes and in doing so improve the level of service provided by a sea defence or coast protection structure (e.g. beach recharge). These different measures and their suitability to different situations are discussed in this chapter.
