Probabilistic Design in Coastal Engineering: Experience, Issues and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

Design of coastal and harbor defense solutions is a complex task, due to the difficulty of describing response to wave loads as well as of describing the stochastic nature of climate forcing. Moreover, nowadays, the existence of a huge number of aging defense structures and climate change-induced forcing variability highlights the need for sustainable maintenance and adaptation plans. In this context, uncertainties related to the non-conventional nature of historical or adapted structures and to the effects of climate change on marine conditions must be properly considered during the design process. Traditional deterministic design methodologies do not consider such uncertainties, whereas probabilistic design methods employ probability distribution functions of the involved variables to estimate the failure probability of a certain system. Nowadays, only a few national design guidelines have started to use probabilistic approaches, which however refer just to newly built structures, while the effects of climate change are considered only in a simplified manner. Though climate-aware engineering design is required, for example by EU guidelines for public work funding, no solid know-how is available yet to designers and decision-makers.

In this context, this Special Issue is aimed at collecting and publishing contribution on the development of probabilistic design frameworks able to consider the uncertainties related to the response of new, existing or adapted coastal and harbor defense solutions as well as to met-ocean forcing in a changing climate. Hands-on contributions based on real-case studies are strongly encouraged.

In particular, we welcome research works on the following topics:

• reviews on probabilistic design methods, adaptation options and models describing failure mechanisms with reference to coastal and harbor defense solutions;
• probabilistic analysis of climate forcing, including the effects of climate change on wave climate and sea levels;
• development of models to describe the failure mechanisms of defense solutions, based on the analysis of experimental and numerical data, focusing on rubble-mound and vertical breakwaters, seawalls and artificial beach nourishments;
• application of probabilistic design frameworks to real-world case studies, providing insights into the practical use of the results of such approaches by designers and decision-makers.

Dr. Rosaria E. Musumeci
Dr. Martina Stagnitti
Guest Editors

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• probabilistic design
• adaptation
• aging structures
• breakwaters
• seawalls
• beach nourishments
• climate change