The BLUE-coast consortium addresses NERC highlight topic B, Coastal morphology: coastal sediment budgets and their role in coastal recovery. This project will adopt a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of biologists, coastal engineers, geologists, geomorphologists and oceanographers with complementary experimental (field and laboratory) and numerical skills, to understand what processes control the coastal system dynamics and answer the relevant scientific questions. BLUE-coast will explicitly address uncertainties in the prediction of medium-term (years) and long -term (decadal and longer) regional sediment budgets and better understand morphological change and how the coast recovers after sequences of events, such as storms by: (i) improving representation of both transportable and source material within the coastal zone within models; (ii) establishing how transportable material is mediated by the ecological system using exemplar habitats representative of the UK coastal zone; (iii) assessing sensitivities of this mixed-sediment physical and biological system to possible changes in external forcing, including the combined impact of multiple variables and sequences of events, with the goal of understanding the internal dynamics of the system (e.g. nonlinearities, critical thresholds, tipping points, precursors and antecedent conditions) in parallel with assessments of behavioural uncertainties, and (iv) reduce uncertainties in medium to long -term prediction of regional sediment budgets and morphological change. Project Overview: the scope of the Highlight Topic sets a requirement for quantitative knowledge on both physical and biological dynamic coastal processes in order to improve hydrodynamic model predictions of regional sediment budgets and morphological change. To deliver an integrated, holistic and cost effective response, our main activities will combine (i) a detailed study of representative shelf sea landscapes that spans the full variety of organism-sediment conditions typically observed in temperate coasts, with (ii) in situ validation studies of key processes, and (iii) manipulative laboratory and field experiments aimed at unambiguously identifying causal relationships and establishing generality, and (iv) integration of new understanding of controls and effects on coastal morphodynamics at regional scales and under environmental forcing. By undertaking a substantial element of in situ observation and process studies, we will directly quantify the effect of antecedent conditions on coastal erosion and recovery, the effect of biota on mediating sediment fluxes and pathways and the effect of event sequencing on coastal erosion and recovery, across a range of geographically significant sediment habitats. These data will act as calibration and validation datasets for existing and innovative numerical models that will be able to simulate the coastal morphological consequences of key biological and physical drivers, alone and in combination. We will gain mechanistic understanding and achieve generality by performing carefully controlled experiments, generating different flow regimes using flumes, tracking changes during natural events using state-of-the-art field measurement technology and, in the laboratory, using intact sediments and sediment communities exposed to anticipated future conditions (warming, ocean acidification, nutrient loading). As it is not feasible to quantify all the relevant morphodynamic processes at high spatial resolution across the entire UK coast, our approach is to address the principal objectives through 4 interdisciplinary workpackages that follow a logical progression of scientific themes.

The proposed research aims to extend work that is already underway for other coastal energy installations around the UK, to provide essential detail on future flood risk and impacts on existing coastal energy infrastructure and develop a decision-support tool (open source GIS) for guiding operational and strategic actions. This is essential for building resilience across the energy sector to extreme events (e.g. coastal storms, high river flows) and longer-term climate change (e.g. sea-level rise, wave climate) in a way that does not rely on emergency measures or impact greatly on consumer energy bills. The project also contributes significantly to taking forward our current energy strategy (nuclear new build, offshore renewables, energy infrastructure investment, building energy security), to enhancing flood resilience in coastal lowlands and low-lying river floodplains, and to reducing our reliance on hard engineering solutions to coastal defence. Research is divided into two stages. The first is a flood risk assessment based on modeling extreme levels from sea-level rise, storms, wave overtopping and high river flows. This assessment will be the input to an open-source GIS to provide a range of energy and coastal stakeholders with a decision-support system (DSS) for operational and strategic planning. This builds directly on the methodology being developed as part of the ARCoES project (http://www.liv.ac.uk/geography-and-planning/research/adaptation-and-resilience-of-coastal-energy-supply/) for the NW region and nuclear sites at Hinkley Point, Sizewell, Bradwell and Sellafield. The DSS is designed as a decision-support tool for the energy industry in responding in a planned and timely way to extreme events and strategically to future climate change through staged investment. The DSS is also being used as a practical and accessible tool by coastal stakeholders and communities to identify the timing and location of key tipping points where/when strategic coastal planning options will need to be re-evaluated within existing shoreline management plans. The second stage is a scoping study for 'sandscaping' that follows the model being developed in the Netherlands for large-scale, self-sustaining beach recharge, thus providing the necessary sediment reservoir for coastal geomorphic systems to respond positively to sea-level rise and to be resilient to storm events. This innovative approach requires both fundamental and applied research to establish feasibility and to identify any negative consequences that might arise down-drift or offshore from the target site. Here, the project brings together state-of-the-art understanding and applications of hydrodynamic and sediment modeling from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) with business, engineering and environmental expertise in 'soft' coastal defence and strategic coastal planning at The Crown Estate (TCE) and Royal Haskoning-DHV (RHDHV) to establish a methodology for establishing the parameters for a sandscaping project with respect to coastal hydrodynamics, sediment source and transport, coastal morphological evolution, wider environmental impact, and project licensing. These two stages will be integrated in a case study focused on Dungeness as a representative gravel shoreline. Dungeness is not one of the study sites for ARCoES yet has emerged in the last year as a priority area for National Grid and Magnox Ltd. Consequently, the proposed collaboration addresses a pressing research need amongst a group of partners who are already working in partnership at sites across the UK.

Despite increasing recognition of connections between natural environment and human health and wellbeing, these links are still poorly understood. There is a real need to develop methodological approaches to fully elucidate natural environments for health and wellbeing. To address this need the CoastWEB project aims to holistically value the contribution which coastal habitats make to human health and wellbeing, with a focus on the alleviation of coastal natural hazards and extreme events. The research is ambitious in its interdisciplinary scope, including art, social and environmental psychology, environmental economics, governance, policy, a suite of natural sciences, and non-academic stakeholders. It also covers a range of scales from local Welsh case study sites to UK national. We are proposing a circular 4 step process: 1. The proposed research begins with the definition of a set of "real world" future interventions for Welsh salt marsh ecosystems, with a particular focus on coastal defence, and set within a broader national policy context. It is critical that the outputs of this research are useful to end users, and not just academic, as such the definition of these options will be made in close collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders. 2. The impact of these interventions on saltmarsh coastal defence capacity will then be explored using natural science and modelling techniques, improving our understanding of the key ecosystem processes and attributes which influence this capacity. The impact on other ecosystem services will also be documented using existing literature. A key output of this step will be the production of Wales-wide maps of changes in salt marsh coastal defence services, under differing interventions. 3. The impact of these changes in coastal defence, and broader ecosystem service delivery, will be linked to changes in human health and wellbeing at both a local community and national scale. The local wellbeing impacts will be explored through the application of qualitative dialogue based techniques, whereas the national scale impacts will be explored through quantitative (monetary and non-monetary) survey techniques. 4. Through mapping and workshops, using both an interactive artistic approach (local) and the established modelling platform, TIM (national), the health and wellbeing results will then feed directly back into the stakeholder base and the management of the salt marsh, as they will provide a unique insight into the broader health and wellbeing aspects of salt marshes, under the future interventions proposed in step 1. The mixed methods approach proposed will provide a greater understanding examining health and wellbeing in different ways, enabling our ability to handle different understandings and interpretations of value. However, the aim is not to use different disciplines to translate for each other, or to combine results into one metric, but rather to embrace the differences in the approaches and outputs and to explore how they can complement each other. Using these complementary approaches and scales is beneficial in providing managers with a diverse array of information for making decisions.

Offshore Wind (OSW) is critical for the UK's economy and energy security. It is also an area of huge investment, for example £14bn has been committed up to the end of 2021 for new OSW sites - the 4th largest construction programme in the UK. Beyond this, the UK's current 2030 OSW installed capacity targets will require £48bn of investment and provide direct employment for 27,000 people. Despite the growing maturity of the OSW sector, certain elements of the installed infrastructure remain problematic. Principally, problems associated with subsea power cables that transport and distribute the electricity generated offshore in wind turbine generators to the onshore transmission system currently account for 75% of the cost of all insurance claims and faults typically take 100+ days to rectify. This leads to breaks in supply and loss of revenue for the wind farm operator which in the long term can lead to longer payback periods and reduced investment elsewhere in their renewables portfolio. In shallow waters these cables must be protected from anchors and fishing gear and the primary protection method is to bury the cable below the seabed. The cable burial depth is a compromise between economic cost of burial (going deeper takes longer, requires larger ships and may require more complex operations) and risk to the cable being damaged by anchors/fishing gear penetrating the seabed. Within this context, anchor-cable interactions currently account for 85% of power cable failures. The planned rapid expansion of offshore wind around the UK - installed capacity increasing 7.5 times over the next 30 years - will require new cable installations within some of the busiest shipping/fishing waters in the world and it is essential that these new cables are installed at the appropriate depth. However, the industry currently lacks appropriate scientific tools to determine anchor penetration depths in different soil conditions. Instead they use simple look-up tables based on very broad descriptive classifications of the soils on the seabed that basically split the huge spectrum of real soil conditions into two categories - soft or hard. This approach has been shown to be highly conservative in some soils leading to unnecessarily deep (and costly) burial. However, it is clearly non-conservative in other conditions as anchor-cable interactions dominate cable failures. This proposal will tackle the lack of sound anchor penetration models head on and, through physical testing and computational modelling, develop a toolkit to assess anchor penetration in different soil conditions. This anchor penetration prediction tool will be based on the site investigation data typically available along cabling routes and avoid the use of oversimplistic look-up tables. Its development will be guided by an industrial project steering group made up of key parties from the OSW sector. Crucially, this innovative anchor penetration model will be calibrated and validated using a geodatabase comprising actual site investigation data. Model performance will be assessed against proven, demonstrable ground conditions and therefore will not rely on hypothetical ground conditions which can be oversimplified using current cable burial assessment techniques (e.g. descriptive single-type soils that do not change with burial depths, as opposed to more complex, multi-layered soil types). In addition to the anchor penetration predictive tool, a number of spatial mapping layers (specific to the UK Continental Shelf) will be created, derived from the tool application to known ground conditions across the UK seafloor. These mapping layers will be made openly available, and are anticipated to feed into high-level spatial planning decisions at project concept stage. In summary, this project will provide an industry usable anchor penetration model allowing the OSW sector to answer the key cable burial question - how deep is deep enough?

The BLUE-coast consortium addresses NERC highlight topic B, Coastal morphology: coastal sediment budgets and their role in coastal recovery. This project will adopt a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of biologists, coastal engineers, geologists, geomorphologists and oceanographers with complementary experimental (field and laboratory) and numerical skills, to understand what processes control the coastal system dynamics and answer the relevant scientific questions. BLUE-coast will explicitly address uncertainties in the prediction of medium-term (years) and long -term (decadal and longer) regional sediment budgets and better understand morphological change and how the coast recovers after sequences of events, such as storms by: (i) improving representation of both transportable and source material within the coastal zone within models; (ii) establishing how transportable material is mediated by the ecological system using exemplar habitats representative of the UK coastal zone; (iii) assessing sensitivities of this mixed-sediment physical and biological system to possible changes in external forcing, including the combined impact of multiple variables and sequences of events, with the goal of understanding the internal dynamics of the system (e.g. nonlinearities, critical thresholds, tipping points, precursors and antecedent conditions) in parallel with assessments of behavioural uncertainties, and (iv) reduce uncertainties in medium to long -term prediction of regional sediment budgets and morphological change. Project Overview: the scope of the Highlight Topic sets a requirement for quantitative knowledge on both physical and biological dynamic coastal processes in order to improve hydrodynamic model predictions of regional sediment budgets and morphological change. To deliver an integrated, holistic and cost effective response, our main activities will combine (i) a detailed study of representative shelf sea landscapes that spans the full variety of organism-sediment conditions typically observed in temperate coasts, with (ii) in situ validation studies of key processes, and (iii) manipulative laboratory and field experiments aimed at unambiguously identifying causal relationships and establishing generality, and (iv) integration of new understanding of controls and effects on coastal morphodynamics at regional scales and under environmental forcing. By undertaking a substantial element of in situ observation and process studies, we will directly quantify the effect of antecedent conditions on coastal erosion and recovery, the effect of biota on mediating sediment fluxes and pathways and the effect of event sequencing on coastal erosion and recovery, across a range of geographically significant sediment habitats. These data will act as calibration and validation datasets for existing and innovative numerical models that will be able to simulate the coastal morphological consequences of key biological and physical drivers, alone and in combination. We will gain mechanistic understanding and achieve generality by performing carefully controlled experiments, generating different flow regimes using flumes, tracking changes during natural events using state-of-the-art field measurement technology and, in the laboratory, using intact sediments and sediment communities exposed to anticipated future conditions (warming, ocean acidification, nutrient loading). As it is not feasible to quantify all the relevant morphodynamic processes at high spatial resolution across the entire UK coast, our approach is to address the principal objectives through 4 interdisciplinary workpackages that follow a logical progression of scientific themes.