Coastal predictions

Published

03 January 2024

Coastal erosion is as old as our planet. But rising sea levels caused by global climate change, as well as our habit of building near shorelines make it an increasingly urgent problem. Now a new research grant will enable Dr Ravindra Jayaratne, Reader of Engineering and Construction at the University of East London to work with a Japanese university to better predict changes to coastlines in the UK and Japan. Understanding such changes is crucial to deciding how to mitigate erosion on our coasts and where it is safe to build structures like houses or industrial plants.

The grant will fund a research project, carried out by Dr Jayaratne and Tohoku University, to construct an enhanced model for predicting coastal evolution, with assistance from the ECOH Corporation, a Japanese engineering consultancy company. The grant was given by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, an NGO that aims to improve relations between the two countries.

Dr Jayaratne explained the impact of the project. He said,

The team will use their expertise to develop a new coastal model to tackle climate change issues on UK and Japanese coastal waters. This will improve current scientific information and enable more accurate long-term predictions for decision makers.”

ECOH’s Dr Mangala Amunugama stressed that the work would be a joint venture, involving both universities and industry, saying, "This project is a significant opportunity to initiate collaborative research, blending the expertise of coastal engineering from both academic and industrial perspectives."

Erosion is a global concern for sandy beaches due to their complex nature and the impacts of climate change. Coastal zone management authorities face mounting challenges in accurately predicting sediment budgets between various coastal systems. Previous studies which tried to map and predict shoreline variation have had limited success due to uncertainties and assumptions made in numerical model development.

The new project will use already published datasets from river catchments, estuaries, and coastal systems, with a focus on the Dyfi inlet in Wales and the Abukuma river inlet in Tohoku, Japan. It will also use a weather forecasting model to obtain predicted wind data and an advanced wave model to obtain wave predictions for these two areas all the way up to the year 2100. The results from these numerical models will be fed into Dr Jayaratne’s beach profile evolution model, to predict shoreline change over the coming decades.

Dr Janaka Bamunawala, assistant professor at Tohoku University, praised the project as an example of an academic-industrial partnership between Japan and the United Kingdom. He said, “The project is an excellent platform to explore more opportunities to enhance our understanding of plausible climate change impacts on shorelines, thus delivering valuable insights to coastal zone planners and managers in both countries.”

The proposed research is poised to have a significant impact on coastal engineering, both in Britain and in Japan. Here in the UK, the work will benefit the Environment Agency, DEFRA, and local councils as they deal with changes to the country’s coasts. Similarly, the research will support Japanese prefectural governments grappling with severe shoreline changes, as well as research institutes such as PARI in Yokosuka, and consulting companies like ECOH.

The project, scheduled for completion by the end of May 2025, will begin with two detailed field programmes in the Dyfi and Abukuma river estuaries. These programmes aim to collect the necessary geomorphological data, complementing the already published information collected for both areas. Subsequently, the team will then combine the information from both sources to develop the advanced numerical model.