Exciting new tool to be launched to visualise the affects of buildings on sand dunes

One of the main goals of the ENDURE project, is to deliver solutions to real world dune management problems.  

This is necessary because dunes are an important part of the coastal defence system within in the 2 Seas region.

In many places along the coast, the development of the dunes is altered by the presence of buildings and other infrastructure in the coastal zone.

Buildings can disturb the natural processes that occur on the beach and in the dunes.

Depending on their location and depth, the presence of buildings might not directly impact coastal safety. However the future effects of climate change (for example sea level rise) make it more difficult to ensure dune resilience. One of the goals of this project, is to develop a simple tool to visualise the effect of building on dunes.

The study focussed on two different effects that occur due to the presence of buildings:

• How the dune erosion that occurs during a storm is altered and
• How the aeolian transport on the beach and in the dunes is altered.

It must be noted that the research into these types of effects are very separated and it is difficult to find information about the two processes being incorporated.

The visualisation has also been simplified to make it accessible to a wider audience.

Within this tool the effect of buildings on a dune is visualised. The following aspects are examples of how the tool might be used:

• How buildings that are present in the erosion profile influence the way in which waves and currents erode the dunes.
• How it can cause the erosion point to retreat landwards and reduces the resistance of the dunes, causing the safety margin present to reduce, or even cause the flood defence to fail during particular conditions.

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. Results will be shown in a transect and on a map with the cross-shore and longshore effects.

A presentation by HHNK on how the tool works, can be found on the ENDURE YouTube channel.