Sustainable development of land reclamations and shorelines: full-scale experiments as a driver for public-private innovations
Type:
Presented during:
CEDA Dredging Days 2012 - Virtue, Venture and Vision in the Coastal Zone
Authors:
Aarninkhof SGJ - Royal Boskalis Westminster, Hydronamic / EcoShape, the Netherlands; Allewijn R - Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, the Netherlands; Kleij AM - Province of South Holland, the Netherlands; Stive MJF - Delft University of Technology / EcoShape, the Netherlands; Baptist MJ - IMARES / EcoShape, the Netherlands
Abstract: 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.
The data available so-far reveal that the morphological evolution of the Sand Motor occurs faster than anticipated. Refined simulations though show that state-of-the-art models do allow for quantitative assessment of concentrated nourishments. Careful analysis of the ecological data sampled from the landscaped extraction site resulted in another key finding: inside the mining pit, 4-5 times more fish was found than outside. At the more strategic level, our findings confirm the key role of full-scale experiments as an effective focal point of (inter-disciplinary) research efforts, and public-private partnering as a successful mechanism to drive innovations in the field of marine infrastructure development.
Key words: Coastal development, Sand Motor, concentrated nourishment, seabed landscaping