Deltares, KIOST Ink Cooperation Agreement

The South Korean east coast is frequently suffering from erosion which threatens its coastal infrastructure and community, Deltares said in its latest announcement. 

So far the processes driving the coastal erosion are not well understood and measures such as nourishments, (submerged) breakwaters, groynes and revetments have not always been successful in mitigating the erosion.

“Therefore, the Korean government initiated the CoMIDAS project (Coastal Modelling Intelligent Defense and Adaptation based on Scientific understanding),” said Deltares.

Together with the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), Deltares helps to better understand and predict coastal erosion at the Korean east coast and, based on this understanding, develop adequate mitigation strategies.

In order to build up local knowledge and capacity to deal with coastal erosion in the future, knowledge transfer to and capacity building of the Korean coastal engineering community are important objectives of the project.

Recently, KIOST and Deltares signed the contract for the 3rd year of a research cooperation to jointly work on the CoMIDAS project objectives.

Understanding a complex system with a multi-scale approach

The east coast is a challenging environment with severe swell events, occasional typhoons, the presence of numerous human interventions and a complex bathymetry consisting of rocky outcrops offshore and rip-bar configurations in the nearshore.

The physical processes in this system act on different spatial (meters to kilometers) and temporal scales (storms, seasons and decades) and, therefore, require a framework of different data analysis and numerical modelling techniques covering these different scales.

In this last and final year the objectives are to:

  • finalize the numerical modelling framework;
  • further improve the process of understanding and numerical models by additional research in cooperation with Delft University of Technology;
  • compile the overall results in (modelling) guidelines for knowledge transfer to the Korean coastal engineering community.