On 15 June Stephen Luger, a technical director at PRDW, addressed the branch on his topic “The Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Erosion and Flooding”. It was an excellent presentation drawing on his significant experience in coastal engineering and the impact climate change would have on it.
He started by explaining how climate change science should be interpreted for coastal engineering applications, noting the key parameters of sea level rise, wave height, wave direction, storm surge, and tropical cyclone intensity.
Stephen drew from various examples of studies conducted, such as in Mauritius, to illustrate the impact of changing climate on seawalls and other coastal defences. He noted that due to long-term changes infrastructure, should be designed to be adaptive to accommodate future modifications as and when required.
He also referenced local examples of Small Bay on the west coast with its hard coastline and Strandfontein Beach with its soft and erodible coastline to illustrate how our coastlines will change over time.
He concluded the presentation with a discussion on mitigation options to address the changes that climate change would bring on our coastal environment. Despite the availability of mitigation options, there are no cheap and easy fixes to this challenge other than kerbing our emissions to limit climate change.
The presentation was enlightening and scary in its assessment that what would be considered a 1-in-100 event today will be a 1-in-10 event within the next 50-years.
If you missed the presentation and would like to listen to it, Stephen has kindly provided a video recording of the presentation which you can access here.
