A shoreline protection project will bring direct impacts to the coastal community. What are the current habits of the residents to access the shorelines? What are their expectations to have a new protection structure? A thorough study of the historic, demographic, and social-economic situation of the community will help researchers develop understanding of the community, identify the stakeholders, and foster effective communications. The regulations, local government and relevant community organizations also play key roles in the project. Being able to engage and integrate all the stakeholders and community resources into the project will make the community transition much smoother during the project.   

How many different types of existing shorelines protection structures/strategies have been adopted in the New York City? What are the strengths and limitations of these structures/strategies? What are their functions and why different strategies have been adopted at different coastal communities? How do we justify the structure/strategy we will adopt for the current project? This study will help researchers develop the general understanding of coastal engineering and specific engineering understanding of our seawall ecological park project.

The Redesigning Urban Shorelines for Resilience project is not just to replace the old coastal infrastructure with the new one, it is aiming to cope with the potential challenges caused by the climate change in the years to come. What are the potential impacts of climate change to the coastal communities under different scenarios? What are the implications of sea level rise to NYC? Where are high-risk zones of flooding now and in the future? The shoreline protection structure needs to be future-proof. What are the evidences and analysis to support all these predictions?

Our shorelines are home to diverse living things. The seawall ecological park highlights an ecologically-friendly seawall design for marine life. An in-depth understanding of type of animals, plants and marine life surrounding the NYC urban shorelines and the knowledge of their life cycles, habits, habitats, and inter-relationships are crucial to create a friendly environment for them. The understanding will also determine the types of environmental parameters need to be monitored by the Habitat Monitoring App.

The unique minimal surface seawall design is to satisfy many project requirements in one shot including structure strength, shorelines protection effectiveness, architectural aesthetics, community accessibility, and  marine lifes friendliness. The study will give the research participants an in-depth understanding of its mathematical and physics foundation, shoreline protection effectiveness, ecological implications, design/manufacturing/deployment process, and their unique contributions and potentials in wider applications. 

Hurricane Sandy (October 22, 2012 ) was the worst natural disaster ever to hit New York City. Forty-three New Yorkers lost their lives, many more lost homes or businesses, and entire communities were sent reeling by the storm’s devastating impact.

In 2013, NYC Mayor Bloomberg publish a report, A Stronger, More Resilient New York, in response to the natural disaster. Here is a chapter from the report focusing on coaster protection. It describes and analyzes the current and predicted coastal protection issues in light of the potential climate change impacts. It also provides strategies and plans to cope with future challenges.

Here is the link of Chapter 3: Coastal Protection (link).

Since the report is for all New Yorkers, it is not in a research paper format. However, it provides comprehensive introduction to the problems of coastal protection and various strategies/measures to solve those problems throughout the NYC coast lines. So, the report can be serves as an excellent introductory material to help us develop broad understanding about coastal protection issues in a real-world context.

While studying the report, it is suggested to think about "what can we do in our research projects to address coastal protection issues?". For example,

• in the wave tank project, ask ourselves: "what type of experiments can we do to help verifying the effectiveness of certain protection measures?", or "what type of wave tank should we build in order to carry out important experiments?". 

• in the coastal simulation project, ask ourselves: "what type of simulations can we do to predict the performance of certain protection measures?", 

• in the seawall geometry project, ask ourselves: "what will be the effectiveness and ecological impacts of coastal protection structures built based on the minimal surface geometry comparing to the traditional hard structures?"

Our Redesigning Urban Shorelines for Resilience project not only involves literature study or conceptual understanding of shorelines protection problems but also seeks to have substantial contributions in some areas of the larger problems including shorelines protection structure study through experimentation and simulation. 

A wave tank is an important physical tool to help us understand the coastal erosion phenomena and verify the effectiveness of various shorelines protection structures. To design a wave tank itself is a whole new project, however, we will first start with reviewing a report for designing a tsunami tank from the Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum, CA. The tsunami tank is for demonstration purpose, however, the design process will be applicable to building a scientific-research wave tank. Also, we will try to build a miniature one only. 

Please focus on the overall structure, components, processes, design options and considerations of wave tank design first rather than implementation details. Here is the link (click here).