A Coastal Defense Work Plan 40 Years Later: Review and Evaluation of the Espinho Case Study in Portugal
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 148, Issue 5
Abstract
In the 1980s, a coastal defense plan was prepared for a 110-km long stretch of the northwest Portuguese coast, from the Leixões harbor to Cape Mondego. This paper revisits the plan for the location of the Espinho beach and compares the original plan predictions with the postconstruction evolution. In addition, coastal evolution prediction is reassessed with present-day models: the one-line model LITMOD and the parabolic model (using the Mepbay software) for headland-bay beaches. In reality, one-line evolution models give overall good predictions when applied to domains of the order of 10 km, whereas empirical equilibrium-beach models are better in predicting coastal configurations close to structures in headland-bay situations. The main conclusion is that the Espinho beach is in a dynamic equilibrium, fluctuating over time but still maintaining its average position, which is in agreement with the original project predictions of the 1980s.
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Acknowledgments
This article was prepared within the Ph.D. work of S. Teixeira Canelas, under a grant provided by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Grant No. PD/BD/128510/2017). The authors acknowledge the Portuguese Territorial General Directorate (DGT) for making available the orthophoto maps, the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) for supporting this study, and the Puertos del Estado Spanish Authority for providing the hindcast offshore wave data.
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Published In
Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 148 • Issue 5 • September 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 9, 2020
Accepted: Mar 7, 2022
Published online: May 19, 2022
Published in print: Sep 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Oct 19, 2022
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