SCOPAC Sediment Transport Study scoping

Major project 2023-2025 \ Samantha Cope, Coastal Partners: £10,000

Background

The most utilised of SCOPAC’s research, the SCOPAC Sediment Transport Study provides a clear understanding of coastal processes across the region, and helps to underpin the development of strategy studies, schemes and future shoreline management policy.

Covering the coastline of central-southern England between Lyme Regis (Dorset) and Shoreham-By-Sea (West Sussex), the original SCOPAC Sediment Transport Study was undertaken by Dave Carter, Dr Malcolm Bray and Professor Janet Hooke of the University of Portsmouth in 1991. This was updated in 2004, (www.southerncoastalgroup-scopac.org.uk/scopac-research/sts-2004/), and again in 2012 (found www.scopac.org.uk/sts/sts-introduction.html). The associated Bibliographic Database (www.scopac.org.uk/sts/bibliographic-database.html) was updated by SCOPAC to source relevant reports, papers and other references from 2002 to 2012. The Sediment Transport Study remains the most heavily used piece of SCOPAC research, informing baseline coastal processes for SMPs, Strategies and schemes across the region.

Following the Southern Coastal Group, Shoreline Management Plan 2 (SMP2) action plan, it has been recommended that the STS is updated to reflect the latest coastal process understanding and will include the roll out of a suite of projects.

Aims and objectives

The aim is for the STS update to be funded by Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management funds, with contributions from SCOPAC. The update will look to incorporate the previous 10 years of literature, studies and analysis of CCO regional coastal monitoring programme data, incorporating the all important 2013/14 storms. It is proposed that an initial scoping project will be undertaken for a series of studies to inform the update which will include:

  • Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole numerical model (MIKE 21) rollout to Selsey Bill;
  • SCOPAC Storm Analysis update;
  • Decadal analysis of geomorphological systems;
  • Bibliographic Database update;
  • Update of the Sediment Transport Study itself.

Expected outputs

The output from this scoping study will be to produce a plan and the associated business cases to draw down the funding for the suite of studies to inform the next update of the Sediment Transport Study.