Tho Duong

Research group: Shore Protection with Integrated Nature-based Solutions ─ Meta (SPINS-Meta)

As Singapore’s coastline continues to expand through land reclamation and coastal development, there is increased reliance on armoured ‘grey’ defence structures such as seawalls and revetments. While offering immediate protection, they have limited capacity to adapt to the changing climate and often have profound negative impacts on marine environments, causing habitat loss, lowering biodiversity, and reducing ecosystem services. Growing interest in ‘hybrid’ shorelines reflects the need for more resilient solutions that reliably provide coastal defence while supporting ecological communities. It is understood that hybrid solutions are context-specific and constrained by limited understanding of suitable typologies and sites for implementation as well as the need to balance the varying priorities of stakeholders. SPINS-Meta sets out to address this challenge and build an enhanced understanding of potential hybrid “green-grey” solutions for Singapore’s urbanized tropical coast. 

Specifically, the project will: 

• Conduct geospatial and meta-analyses of environmental conditions and project outcomes, providing a global perspective on hybrid coastal protection approaches. 

• Model species distributions under current and future climate scenarios to generate maps of habitat suitability for coastal ecosystems. 

• Develop a shoreline suitability model to identify representative shoreline segments that would be appropriate for future integration of hybrid solutions in urbanized coastal settings.