Coastal Protection and Flood Defence

Coastal erosion and flooding pose a threat to people and their property at the coast. For generations, society has built defences to prevent erosion and protect land from flooding. Examples of these include groynes, sea walls and embankments (termed hard engineering).

Present day approaches also include soft engineering such as replenishing eroding beaches with sand, referred to as beach nourishment. Also, nature is occasionally allowed to take its course through managed retreat or coastal realignment, where existing hard defences are intentionally or naturally allowed to breach so recreating natural saltmarsh. This provides a place for high tides to spread out and would be most effective in firths.

There is no central record of all historic coastal management schemes, although aerial survey (see NMPi Aerial photography layers) would indicate where the coast had most likely been altered.

For more information, please see the Dynamic Coast website. This shows the predicted erosion around the coast.