Environmental Design Guidelines for Low Crested Coastal Structures

The effect of human activities is primarily local but can extend far away from the location of intervention. This underlines the importance of establishing coastal zone management plans covering large stretches of coastlines. The interaction of wave climate, beach erosion, beach defence, habitat changes and beach value, which clearly exists based on EC research experiences and particularly on results obtained by DELOS Project (www.delos.unibo.it) for Low Crested Structures (LCSs), suggests the necessity of integrated approaches and thus the relevance of design guidelines covering: structure stability and construction problems, hydro and morphodynamic effects, environmental effects (colonisation of the structure and water quality), societal and economic impacts (recreational benefits, swimming safety, beach quality). The present guidelines are specifically dedicated to LCSs to provide methodological tools both for the engineering design of structures and for prediction of performance and environmental impacts of such structures. It is anticipated that the guidelines will provide valuable inputs to coastal zone management plans. The target audience for this set of guidelines is consulting engineers or engineering officers and officials of local authorities dealing with coastal protection schemes. The guidelines are also of relevance in providing a briefing of current best practice for local and national planning authorities, statutory agencies and other stakeholders in the coastal zone. The guidelines have been drafted in a
generic way to be appropriate throughout the European Union taking into regard current European Commission policy and directives to promote sustainable development and integrated coastal zone management.

The guidelines are composed of three main parts.
The first part (Chapters 1-10) contains the description of the design methodology, from the preliminary identification of design alternatives till the selection of the sustainable scheme and its construction.
The second part presents: the analysis of the performance of beach defences in DELOS study sites, which were selected to represent a variety of environmental conditions (Chapter 11); the application of the proposed methodology to a real prototype case, in order to give a practical example to designers (Chapter 12).
The third part contains all the formulae and tools to help engineers (Chapter 13), ecologists (Chapter 14) and economists (Chapter 15) during the design procedure.

These Guidelines are a product of DELOS Consortium; for each section the main authors and their institution are mentioned, whose contact information can be found in the list reported in DELOS Consortium section.