Quantifying the storm erosion hazard for coastal planning

The quantity of coastline retreat resulting from storm erosion is one of the most important phenomena that needs to be accurately quantified to facilitate effective coastal management strategies. Historically, the volume of storm erosion (and coastline retreat) accommodated for coastal planning decisions has been directly linked to the storm (usually defined by considering wave height and duration only) with a certain pre-defined return period, known as a Synthetic Design Storm (SDS) (e.g. 1 in 100 year storm). The SDS method of estimating storm erosion volumes for coastal planning thus assumes that, for example, the 1 in 100 year storm event also results in a 1 in 100 year erosion event. This communication discusses the physical reality of this assumption and demonstrates the improved performance of a new method, based on Joint Probability Distributions (JPD) for estimating storm erosion volumes proposed by Callaghan et al. [Callaghan, D.P., Nielsen, P., Short, A.D. and Ranasinghe, R., 2008. Statistical simulation of wave climate and extreme beach erosion. Coastal Engineering, 55(5): 375–390] using one of the world's longest beach profile surveys from Sydney, Australia.