A State-of-the-Art Review on Storm Events, Overtopping and Morphological Changes in Front of Coastal Structures

Overtopping phenomena and consequent floods cause significant damage to coastal communities. Morphological changes in front of structures during storms can influence their functionality, affecting their stability and leading to failures, impacting the population that are depending on those coastal interventions for their protection. The effect of climate changes, such as sea level rise and increase of the frequency and intensity of storms, can raise the number of overtopping events over defense structures, also increasing coastal morphological changes, challenging future managers, engineers and the scientific coastal communities. A review of morphological changes in front of coastal defense structures and in natural barriers due to overtopping, wave run-down and reflux was conducted. The objective of this review was to find and gather relevant information, sometimes dispersing, reflecting and grouping the concepts found in the literature. Additionally, the gaps in scientific research are addressed, focusing on topics that may be enhanced. Several keywords used in the research were presented, emphasizing the relationship between overtopping and models (physical and numerical), storms, defense structures and morphological changes, also related to wave run-down during storms. The results show that there is limited information available that is mainly related to morphological changes in front of coastal defense structures during storm events, showing an opportunity to develop knowledge.