SafeShore Project
Principal Investigator
Climate change will lead to significant sea level rise and more frequent, intense storm surges. These developments pose severe risks to coastal regions, threatening human lives, cultural heritage, and economic stability. Conventional shoreline protection methods, such as seawalls and armour blocks, have proven effective. However, their reliance on heavy concrete makes them slow to construct and environmentally unsustainable.
 To address these challenges, the SafeShore project has developed a novel hybrid-composite technology to build shore-protection systems, reducing construction time, carbon footprint, and cost. The technology merges techniques from heavy concrete marine and lightweight composite material construction. Inspired by the principle of the human body, it consists of an exterior skin, an interior skeleton and a filling material. Both skin and skeleton are made of fiber-polymer composites, materials known for their durability and strength while being significantly lighter than concrete. These lightweight composites can be easily transported to their final position in the sea, immersed, and then filled with dredged soil to obtain the required heavy weight.
 In the current phase, research is focused on quantifying abrasive erosion of composite surfaces caused by waterborne particles, assessing aquatic and sediment toxicity of the materials, and life cycle assessment and costing.