Scour protection guide to be published
Scour, the erosion of sediment at the base of a structure, is a serious engineering issue, and understanding, designing for and managing toe scour and beach lowering at coastal structures is a key issue for coastal managers, designers and engineers.
To address the lack of specific information in this area, HR Wallingford in the UK is working on behalf of the Environment Agency to develop guidance on the management of the toe of coast defence structures.
The new guide, due for publication in summer 2009, will provide practical guidance on prediction of toe scour as well as examining options for mitigation. It will introduce new knowledge from recent research and translate it into good practice.
The aim is to provide easy access to predictive methods for beach lowering and scour to help the user to decide on the governing parameters and processes, and hence on how to accommodate for scour in design. The guide will also include information on aspects of structure design and on monitoring.
As well as drawing together the recent work undertaken at HR Wallingford on beach lowering and scour, HR Wallingford is also looking to integrate work on performance and reliability of coastal structures developed for the Performance-based Asset Management Project (PAMS), including performance analysis and asset inspection guidance.
