This innovation cannot arrive soon enough. In the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (2019), scientists concluded that by 2050, extreme coastal flooding - previously something that happened around once in a century - could be happening every year.
Further analysis for the UK has shown that large swathes of Norfolk and the East Coast are at significant risk, especially when rising sea levels combine with rough seas and high tides.
Protecting communities
Engineering innovations are urgently needed to protect the communities most at risk – or at least to buy time before large-scale evacuations are inevitable. Far from being abstract, complex computations are critical to preventing structural damage, loss of resources and loss of life.
Applications of the AMAZON codes are already at work across the UK:
The Bacton Gas Terminal in Norfolk is considered the UK’s most important energy hub, but in 2013 it was close to being at the mercy of the waves. The worst storm surge for a hundred years eroded the land to such an extent that only 15 metres were left between the hub and the sea.
Bacton processes a third of the UK’s natural gas supplies and is the terminus of the UK’s only gas supply lines from continental Europe. Along with hundreds of nearby homes, this critical piece of national infrastructure was now at serious risk from the sea.
Dutch engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV proposed a ‘sand engine’ to replenish the beach around the Bacton terminal. Beaches act as a barrier to waves. Sand engines replace sand, to add decades to the lifespan of a beach or to recreate beaches that have almost disappeared. AMAZON was used to determine the shape of the beach and where the replacement sand should be placed.