How can civil and coastal engineering help society to adapt to the growing risks posed by climate change? What is physical modelling and how does it allow engineers to investigate how proposed structures would perform under extreme conditions?
As sea-level rise and storms become more severe, we are experiencing increases in coastal flooding, erosion, wave overtopping, and damage to infrastructure.
This subject taster session, delivered by
Professor Martyn Hann , will show you how laboratory experiments, engineering design and an understanding of coastal processes come together to develop safer, more resilient, and more sustainable solutions for adapting our coasts to climate change.
Professor Hann will introduce you the physical processes that make coastal areas vulnerable and ask you to consider how these risks may change in the future.
You’ll examine a range of engineering approaches that can be used to reduce these risks, from traditional coastal defences such as seawalls and breakwaters to more nature-based and adaptive approaches.
The lecture will also introduce the role of physical modelling in developing and testing new coastal engineering solutions, by using examples from the
Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport (COAST) laboratory , you will explore how scaled physical models can be used to reproduce coastal processes in a controlled environment; learning how these experiments identify potential weaknesses and optimise designs before they are built at full scale.
