Impact of Buildings Tool

In the 2 Seas area, buildings such as cafés and toilet blocks are often present in dunes and on the beach. This infrastructure may impact the natural resilience of coastal dunes. Effects can be positive or negative and include:

• Flooding (negative). When a building is disturbed (by waves/currents), a breach in the dune system can occur
• Erosion (negative). Wind/wave action around building can have scouring effect and damage dunes
• Nourishment (positive). Buildings can cause sediment to build up, nourishing dunes and helping natural function
• Defence (positive). Buildings can shelter dunes from wind/waves during storm/surge events.

Before the start of this project, it was difficult for dune managers to understand the effects of buildings on dune systems. It was hard to manage dune systems for greatest resilience under climate change impacts without this knowledge.

We have created and developed an innovative new tool to provide a way to easily assess building impact, making it easier for stakeholders to make the most of dune resilience.

With this tool the effect of buildings on dunes is visualised. Within the tool you can choose from different aspects: storm conditions, sea level rises and types of building to show the effect, but there is also the possibility to compare effects next to each other. The following can be displayed by the tool:

• How buildings influence the way in which waves and currents erode the dunes.
• How buildings can cause the erosion point to retreat landwards and reduce the resistance of the dunes. This could even cause the flood defence to fail during particular conditions.

This project was led by HHNK.

Impact on Building Tool

A presentation by HHNK on how the tool can be used can be found on our YouTube Channel.