An Innovative method to protect beaches from wave induced erosion
An Innovative method to protect beaches from wave induced erosion
By Dr. S. Neelamani and Er. Noor Al-Anjari
(Patent number: US 10550534 B1; Date of Patent: Feb 4, 2020)
It is now for the world to solve the serious problem of spreading of Corona virus. There are many other problems as serious as Corona virus, (which does not appear serious, but it is serious) and its impact on socioeconomic development of countries. One such problem is erosion of beaches and coast due to waves and its accelerating effect due to global warming and sea level rise. In Kuwait, many beach houses, especially in between Ras Al-Ardh and the southern border are experiencing wave-induced erosion. In India, out of 6632 km of coast, 2156 km of coasts are eroding https://www.nccr.gov.in/?q=activities/coastal-process. Protecting these beaches from erosion needs many billion US dollars. The total length of coastlines in the world is about 1.16 million km. The population density is very high near the coast (like all GCC countries) and the land value of the coastal area is high. Hence, countries cannot afford to lose their coastal land due to erosion.
The sea-level is also raising due to climate change and we need an innovative, cost effective and environment friendly solution to take care of erosion and such future risk associated with sea level rise by extending the height of the coastal erosion protection structure by spending little bit extra cost. The countries around the World with coast spend about 2000 to 2500 million US $ every year to prevent or reduce their beach erosion. Many countries do not have enough financial resources for protecting their beaches from erosion. Many conventional solutions are used (like Seawalls, Groins, offshore breakwater, periodic nourishment of beaches etc.). These solutions have major side effects such as coastal morphological changes to the nearby coast (because of Groins), permanent loss of the existing sandy beach (because of seawall), destruction of benthic life (because of rubble mound offshore breakwaters) etc. All these conventional solutions need high volume of stones and hence it is necessary to break hills of dig the quarries, which also create significant environmental issues.
People also do not like coastal protection solutions based on rock dumping any more, since they are aesthetically not good. In case of a need to remove them in future, it will be prohibitively expensive. In Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, this was one of our challenging problem and we were thinking for many years to solve this specific problem. Based on years of research in the coastal engineering laboratory, we have come up with a solution to solve coastal erosion protection which is not only cost competitive to the conventional solution but it is also environmentally less damaging, easy to build, install and elegant in appearance. The principle behind this invention is as follows: The waves acting on the beach has energy and this energy is used to displace the beach sand and results in erosion. If this energy is dissipated to the needed extent, then the waves cannot erode the beach. The wave energy in Kuwait is moderate, whereas in open Arabian Sea, it is high. It is even higher in beaches facing open Ocean like Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. The invention takes care of the progressive wave energy dissipation, which consists of a number of porous vertical walls. Based on the field wave condition, the invention gives optimized solution.
It is always required to allow a small wave energy to act on the beaches to keep the beach clean and for maintaining the water quality. The inventors of this US patent (Patent number: US 10550534 B1; Date of Patent: Feb 4, 2020) is Dr. S. Neelamani, Senior Research Scientist, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait and Engr. Noor Al-Anjari from Kuwait University. For further scientific details, one can contact Mobile: 99278411 or email nsubram@kisr.edu.kw. For commercialization opportunities, the companies can contact Engr. Ahmad I. Haji, Manager of Commercialization Department, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Mobile: 99014472
