ABSTRACT
The coastal zone has an important influence on the well-being of communities whose homes and industries lie along the coast. Coastal engineers are called upon to provide protection against storm or flood damage, to maintain or improve beaches and to construct ports or marinas. One of the major developments of the past two decades has been the use of computers to simulate coastal processes and to model the impact of engineering works. This has occurred in parallel with a better understanding of, and concern for, the environment. The general principles of modern coastal management have also been largely developed over the past two decades. The many issues surrounding the predicted climate change have added another layer of complexity to coastal management, which are now being seriously addressed in terms of future management. One key aspect of modern coastal management includes identifying and quantifying coastal hazards and climate change impacts to assess coastal vulnerability. Coastal management is then faced, inter alia, with determining policies and practices for adaptation (e.g., no active intervention, managed re-alignment, hard and soft engineering) in response to coastal vulnerability. In this chapter, the following aspects of coastal engineering are detailed: the action of waves on beaches and the resulting forms of coastal sediment transport, the calculation of longshore transport and estimation of shoreline evolution, a description of coastal system behaviour, the concepts of shoreline management and its relationships to natural coastal processes, a description of coastal defence principles and the design of typical forms of coastal defences, the forms of wave modelling and its relevance to coastal engineering design, the effects of climate change on coastal management and the adaption measures that can be used, and recent European developments in coastal engineering and management.
