Challenge 1: Scientific Evidence Coastal Protection
There is a frequent lack of knowledge on system performance (especially in extreme conditions), and how best to select Key Performance Indicators for monitoring after implementation. We have managed and investigated this challenge through several methods, which you will read more about.
Practitioners evidence for coastal protection against flooding
This challenge demonstrates climate change solutions at seven target sites, so-called coastal resilient laboratories. These sites comprise large-scale existing investment projects that will be leveraged and enriched with transnational best practices, performance monitoring, co-analysing and transnational practitioners lessons learned on the effectiveness of these investments/interventions in different coastal management schemes. It focusses on beach and shoreface nourishments, sediment management and erosion control by means of ecosystem based solutions.
More information on Building with Nature at Coastal Sites, read the factsheet Demonstrating Building with Nature at coastal sites (pdf, 305 kB)
Learning by doing
Learning by doing is a key element in this challenge. By doing research to implemented BwN measures on a project’s lifecycle through monitoring, it helps to identify knowledge gaps, provides lessons for other locations and enhances the understanding and applicability of BwN measures.
The evidence base
The aim of this research is to develop an evidence base of the effectiveness of BwN solutions with respect to climate resilience.
Therefore several research questions were drawn. The main research question for this project is:
“In what way is resilience to climate change using Building with Nature principles best served in coastal management in the North Sea region?”
The first step in this research was the inventory and comparison of current practices of each partner and an inventory of behavioural differences of shoreface nourishment in the Netherlands. Besides that, factsheets were drafted for all partners on their current practice. The next step was to comprise a shared transnational methodology (internal working document) to analyse all laboratories in a consistent way by means of the development of various coastal state indicators over time. The national analyses are being brought together (twinning programme) in a co-analysis of all laboratories, which focuses on performance monitoring of beach and shoreface nourishments in the selected coastal laboratories by means of hypotheses testing.
Still in progress
At this moment, the research is still in progress and therefore it is not possible to draw conclusions yet. More information will be published as soon as the research is finished, we expect this to be around July 2020.