The briefing article (Gouldby, 2012) and the first two papers in this issue (Chen and Alani, 2012;Cihan, 2012) relate to various aspects of risk assessment. This reflects the progressive move to risk-based techniques in both design and planning over the past few decades. Such techniques, in the form of reliability analysis, saw significant advance for the design of offshore platforms to extract North Sea oil and gas in the 1970s and 1980s (ThoftChristensen and Baker, 1982). At about this time, exploratory applications were also under way for the design of coastal defences, notably in the US and Netherlands (CUR/TAW, 1990;Dover and Bea, 1980). During the 1990s and early 2000s the focus shifted from individual structures to applying risk-based assessment at a large scale to whole systems (e.g. entire catchments, or coastal cells). This was enabled by advances in computing capability, in conjunction with the development of large databases containing details of defences, land levels, property and so on, alongside long-term records of the key drivers such as sea level, storm surge and waves. Such systematic analysis of sea defence reliability and flood risk is now becoming common practice and being applied in vulnerable locations around the world (Pender and Faulkner, 2010;Reeve, 2010).The ability to undertake risk analysis at a regional, or national, scale can be particularly valuable for both planning and policy formulation. A good example of the former is the TE2100 project, where regional analysis of flood risk in the Thames helped identify the most vulnerable areas and hence prioritise investment needs (Lavery and Donovan, 2005). The value of the latter has underpinned the formulation of strategic investment planning for flood defences in the UK (EA, 2009) and more recently has provided a robust foundation for an important aspect of the UK's first climate change risk assessment (CCRA) (Defra, 2012). The CCRA also starts to provide a much broader context, considering socio-economic change alongside climate change and trying to relate the biophysical impacts caused by climate change (notably sea level rise, flooding and drought) to impacts on health, transport, biodiversity and business, as well as the direct impacts on domestic and industrial properties. The more detailed advances presented in this issue all contribute to developing a richer understanding of the complex risk landscape that needs to be assessed to inform policy and enable robust decision making.A while ago we announced that we were seeking to start two new initiatives in Maritime Engineering. One was to have short briefing articles about historical papers that retain a contemporary relevance or interest. We hope that the first of these will appear shortly. The second initiative was to include a briefing article that links to a paper we are publishing, to provide a broader context and some explanation of the article. The aim is to provide an introduction for non-specialists and, for very theoretical papers, to highlight the potential applications o...
One of the aims of this journal is to showcase both practical and theoretical developments. Whilst the Maritime Engineering journal receives a steady stream of submissions covering research and design in the marine environment, papers dealing with construction are rare and those dealing with post-project monitoring even rarer.In the proceedings of the 9th ICE Breakwaters Conference held in Edinburgh in autumn 2009, Allsop et al. (2010) suggest that future publications on coastal structures and breakwaters should certainly include more guidance on: design and construction of breakwaters on soft soils; constructability in swell conditions (both for rubble mounds and caissons); performance of concrete armour units, particularly structural strength and durability; climate change effects on performance, and adaptation; deterioration of current sea defence infrastructure; sustainability and carbon footprints of interventions; and rather more on the design, performance and constructability of renewable-energy devices.It is therefore good to see two of the three papers in this issue covering the construction and post-project monitoring of breakwaters. The further good news is that there are more of these papers in the pipeline -continuing the Spanish themewhich we expect to publish over the next few issues.The first of the construction papers deals with the extension of a breakwater at Tarragona in Spain by 845 m. The extension was built using 11 huge caissons each some 67 m in length. In addition, the local beach was replenished with 400 000 m 3 of sand. In all the construction took 3 years. The paper by Sánchez et al. (2010) covers several aspects of the design work and then describes and illustrates the many of the issues that were addressed during the construction process.This is followed by a paper that deals with a novel means of post-project performance monitoring. The port of Alicante has been extended with the construction of a 1250 m and 24 m high rubble-mound breakwater, using blocks weighing 20-30 tonnes. Concerns about ground stability meant that performance monitoring was an integral part of the design, in order to check the geotechnical responses of the ground, not only during the construction process but also after the works had been completed. The paper by Eleno Carretero (2010) explains the use of an auscultation system (which listens for sounds within the breakwater) to measure changes in pore pressure, total pressures, horizontal and vertical movements and covers the instrumentation, data-collection and -transmission system, and the processing and interpretation of the results.The final paper in this issue relates to the environmental impact of developments. Models are routinely used for such assessments and in estuarine situations this can involve complex flow environments, where fluvial and tidal currents interact giving rise to salinity-induced density gradients and stratification. The paper by Liu et al. (2010) looks at a particular application to the Danshuei River in Taiwan and the influence of...
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