A Standard Approach to Coastal Structures?

The European coastal engineering community is currently in a time of considerable change in terms of the standards to be followed when undertaking coastal structure designs. Amongst coastal engineering practitioners there appears to be limited awareness of current activity and forthcoming changes in standardisation that will have significant impacts on the industry. This paper primarily seeks to raise awareness of these changes, identify key issues for further consideration during standards development and highlight potential impacts to those likely to be most affected.

A summary of the current status of international, European and national standards/codes of practice in relation to coastal structures is provided, highlighting the introduction of a new Eurocode (expected circa 2020) covering ‘wave and current actions on coastal structures’. This is followed by a brief synopsis of the Eurocode design philosophy and a review of previous work to harmonise coastal structure design with Eurocode approaches. The paper then discusses potential areas for focus during the preparation of the new coastal structures Eurocode.