A simple life-cycle method for predicting extreme shoreline erosion

Abstract

The dynamical responses of a shoreline over long-term (years or decades) is a non-linear and time-dependent random process. It is affected by both longshore and cross-shore sediment transports. The former tends to cause cumulative changes in the mean shoreline position while the latter usually only leads to beach profile fluctuations relative to the moving mean beach profile. Due to the time-dependency of the process the life-cycle approach is ideally suited to formulate the probability distribution of extreme shoreline erosion. A model based on such approach and using standard Monte Carlo simulation techniques has been reported by Dong and Chen (1999). In this paper a simplified procedure is developed by introducing the assumption that the longshore and cross-shore processes are statistically independent. This then allows the probability distribution of the extreme erosion to be calculated in terms of the marginal probability distributions of the maximum recessions due to purely longshore and purely cross-shore transport. This method was applied to two idealised shoreline configurations and its usefulness for engineering applications is evaluated by comparison with the full Monte Carlo method.