3rd phase to save sinking islands goes ahead

The Hulhumalé project, which began in September with 10 hectares reclaimed, followed by another 29 in October, will see another 24 added in phase 3 – a total of 63 hectares.

Work is being carried out by European marine civils contractor Van Oord, working with Boskalis, which has deployed its 14-year-old hopper dredger Willem van Oranje to dig up sand from the seabed and use it to create land for the archipelago, which is struggling to find room for its 518,000 population.

The work is extremely complicated, with statistical analysis having to be performed to measure wave surges and flood risks.

Thomas van der Pol, Geronimo Gussmann, Jochen Hinkel, Angel Amores, Marta Marcos, et al describe the process in their Decision-support for land reclamation location and design choices in the Maldives. Climate Risk Management, 2023 report, which analyses extreme water levels, total water level distribution and conditional load distribution estimations.

“We define islands as unbreakable structures that can only fail by wave overtopping or overflow, the optional flood defence is associated with a variety of failure modes, which can be represented by an appropriate strength distribution function,” it says.

The Maldives is almost more reclaimed than original, and even its airport is built on an artificial island.

In August the Addu City Reclamation project was completed, with Van Oord’s trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) HAM318 building around 200 hectares of resilient land including Maradhoo, Hankede, Hithadhoo zone 1 and 2, and Resort islands 1, 2 and 3.

Other works have involved rock revetment construction for the coastal protection of the reclamations; a second layer of geotubes filling for the resort islands 1, 2 and 3; drainage construction in the reclamations; and levelling of the sand material in the reclaimed areas.

The reclamation, which the islands say is vital for the housing needs of its population, is being organised by the Capital Marine and Civil Construction Company Private Limited.