Coastal Protection against Flooding - Dissertation Example

Generally, the management of flood and coastal defense within a strategic framework encourages practices that avoid disruption to natural processes and which are sustainable in the long term (including adapting to climate change).
The areas that this project is going to be based on or the approach strategically will be based on:
- Brief introduction to beach morphology,
- The administrative framework for flood and coastal defense in England and Wales,
- Problems with flood and coastal defense policies,
- Management realignment,
- Breakwaters structures from concept to design,
- Seawalls structures from concept to design,
- Assessment of the impact of coastal defense,
- The long-term views,
- Innovation in seeking and developing solutions;
- A comprehensive regard to impacts.
The government flood and coastal defense policy are aiming: ‘‘To reduce risk to people and the developed and natural environment from flooding and coastal erosion by encouraging the provision of technically, environmentally and economically sound and sustainable defense measures’ (HOC, 1998). Which is ideally what this project is about.
A beach can be defined as a deposit of mobile sediments located on the area in between the sea and the dry land that is regularly interfered with by the daily hydrodynamic processes such as tides, waves, and current, and in most cases win (Rogers, et al, 2010). British beaches around the coastline can be grouped into four main categories which include (i) Shingle, (ii) Shingle upper-sand lower, (iii) Mixed sand and shingle, and finally (iv) sand. All the beaches around the UK demonstrate a continuing evolution process and can be practically considered to have begun the transformation towards the end of the last Ice Age when the Sea levels were approximately 50-80 m lower than the present-day measurement.  A clear justification that the beaches are transforming from to time is the fact that during the Ice Age the UK beaches from South Wales to East Anglia of the Britain north were covered by an Ice sheet while presently north of this line, virtually all of the beaches are covered by thick boulder clay deposits laid down beneath the ice sheet (Rogers, et al, 2010).  In certain areas specifically along the south and the east coast of the UK, the advancing sea came across and battered soft sedimentary rocks most of which were comprised of sand and gravels deposited in ancient geological periods and were parts shoreline as cliffs or coastal slopes. It is this bettering that brought about sediment that added to the bulk of stock of sediments from the transforming beaches.
Presently there is still a continuous process that adds up sediment that replaces the volume that was taken onshore by the marine transgression. The present-day sediment in the UK beaches are considered to be coming from (i) the cliffs and coastal slopes laid down during or since the last Ice age (ii)  rivers and estuaries (iii) the seabed and (iv) human activities such as disposal of quarry disposal as well as beach recharge disposals (Rogers, et al, 2010).