VEGETATED FORESHORES AS COASTAL PROTECTION STRATEGY: COPING WITH UNCERTAINTIES AND IMPLEMENTATION

Worldwide, hard structures are used as coastal protection measure. These structures are static and do not respond to the changing climate like sea level rise and increasing storminess. Moreover, the energy released during extreme events is hardly dissipated, resulting in enormous losses and damage. Recently, the use of soft solutions in front of hard structures is more and more proposed – but not applied – as sustainable coastal protection measure. These measures allow for economic growth in coastal regions, which are the world’s most valuable areas. Promising Building with Nature solutions for flood protection, such as vegetated foreshores, inherently have a dynamic nature. Therefore there is a relatively large degree of uncertainty with respect to their contribution to flood protection. This hampers innovation and the implementation of vegetated foreshores in flood risk management worldwide.