Improving decadal coastal geomorphic predictions: an overview of the iCOASST project

Coastal areas are already at high risk from a range of geohazards. The cumulative effect of human intervention on soft coastlines has frequently left them far from equilibrium under today’s conditions, especially in densely populated areas. Future changes in marine forcing due to climate change reinforce the need to understand and predict processes of change in shoreline position and configuration at management (decadal) scales. The UK-based iCOASST project is developing new and improved methods to predict decadal geomorphic evolution, linked to coastal erosion and flood risk management. This is based on a framework that links several components to develop a system-level understanding of this change. The framework includes: (1) new methods for system-level analysis and mapping of coast, estuary and inner shelf landform behaviour; (2) well validated ‘bottom-up’ hydrodynamic and sediment transport shelf models which can be applied at shelf scales to investigate inner shelf-coastal interactions; and (3) model compositions formed of existing or new ‘reduced complexity models’ of selected coastal landforms and processes that are suitable for multiple decadal length simulations. This will ultimately allow multiple simulations of coastal evolution which can explore uncertainties in future decadal-scale coastal response, including the effects of climate change and management choices. This paper outlines the current state of progress in the iCOASST Project.