Coastal protection measures, case study (Mediterranean zone, Egypt)

The rapid erosion in most coastlines is considered a major problem not only in Egypt, but also around the world. The main causes are due to anthropogenic activities and/or coastal hydrodynamics. The coastal zone suffers from sedimentation, accretion, and pollution problems as well as the side effect of climate change. The climate change will increase sea level rise, salt water intrusions, and storm surge. Major efforts has been exerted to manage coastal erosion problems and to restore coastal capacity in order to protect housing, infrastructure and the cultivated land. These problems were encountered with various types of hard structures, but most of these methods response were limited due to lack in evaluation of the entire ecological situation. This encouraged the coastal engineers to think about new types of environmental friendly structures work better with ecological situation. In this study, the protection measures worldwide is reviewed and divided mainly into four groups, hard, soft, combined, innovative measures. The usage and side effect of each type is mentioned briefly. It is clear that there is a predominant approach towards the soft engineering, the eco-engineering techniques, or combination between them in order to enhance the ecological situation. Recently, there are several efforts to apply these new technologies to protect the coastal zone as well as the environment by taking into consideration the effect of climate change. These new approaches in coastal protection are multi used, environmentally friendly, easy to modify and maintain, and efficient from an economic perspective. Previous efforts in solving coastal problems in Egypt are analyzed and discussed taking into consideration the experience of similar cases worldwide. It is clear that the environmental friendly coastal structure is more suitable to solve most of our coastal problems with saving our ecosystem and reduce the protection cost.