Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity.

Beach nourishments are a widely used method to mitigate erosion along sandy shorelines. In contrast to hard coastal protection structures, nourishments are considered as soft engineering, although little is known about the cumulative, long-term environmental effects of both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. Recent endeavours to sustain the marine ecosystem and research results on the environmental impact of sediment extraction and nourishment activities are driving the need for a comprehensive up-to-date review of beach nourishment practice, and to evaluate the physical and ecological sustainability of these activities. While existing reviews of nourishment practice have focused on the general design (motivation, techniques and methods, international overview of sites and volumes) as well as legal and financial aspects, this study reviews and compares not only nourishment practice but also the accompanying assessment and monitoring of environmental impacts in a number of developed countries around the world. For the study, we reviewed 205 openly-accessible coastal management strategies, legal texts, guidelines, EIA documents, websites, project reports, press releases and research publications about beach nourishments in several developed countries around the world (Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, UK, USA and Australia). Where information was not openly available, the responsible authorities were contacted directly. The study elaborates on the differences in coastal management strategies and legislation as well as the large dissimilarities in the EIA procedure (where applicable) for both marine sediment extraction and nourishment activities. The spatial disturbance of the marine environment that is considered a significant impact, a factor which determines the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment, varies substantially between the countries covered in this study. Combined with the large uncertainties of the long-term ecological and geomorphological impacts, these results underline the need to reconsider the sustainability of nourishments as “soft” coastal protection measures.

Recent natural disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tohoku Tsunami, exhibited the importance of tsunami resistant infrastructure in high-risk coastal areas. The failure of critical infrastructure in tsunami-stricken communities has led to a recent emphasis on extreme loading conditions associated with tsunami events. One of the critical loads identified by previous research was debris loads. Debris is defined as solid objects entrained within the inundating flows and can range from construction materials to shipping vessels. The emphasis of tsunami loading has led to recent progression in the understanding of debris loads and effects, particularly in evaluating the impact of a single debris piece on a structure. The following paper reviews state-of-the-art research in tsunami-driven debris motion and loads and identifies future directions of research into debris loads and effects to aid in the design of tsunami-resistant infrastructure.

Ship-borne waves are of significant interest for the design of port and waterway infrastructure and the maintenance of its surrounding environment. Computation of these nonlinear and dispersive waves has mainly been focusing on their near-field generation as a fluid-body interaction problem. This study presents an approach for the computation of ship waves generated by a moving pressure disturbance with phase-resolving and depth-averaged equations. To support a wide range of applicability, the paper deals with the evolution of the vessel wedge compared to an analytical solution for sub-to supercritical speeds and the assessment of wave patterns from a broad range of pressure term dimensions, including cross-references to findings in other studies. The conducted numerical experiments showcase the typical response of a Boussinesq-type model to a simplified moving pressure disturbance and identify the main factors and criteria for ship-wave propagation in the far-field of a vessel. Finally, a unique field dataset underlines the capability of an extended Boussinesq-type model to compute the propagation of vessel waves over an irregular bathymetry