Nature-Based Eco-Hydraulic Technology

The last decades have been characterized by increasing extreme events including storm surges, flooding, coastal erosion, and enhanced coastal vulnerability with associated livelihood, biodiversity, and natural system and economic losses. Coastal water quality is declining due to microbial pathogens, fertilizers, pesticides, and heavy metal contamination because of the aftermath of increasing extreme coastal events, threatening the ecosystem and human health. Hard engineering like seawalls has been used to prevent, protect, and control water-based environmental forces with an extended impact on the land. A nature-based engineering solution, such as growing vegetation, is being adopted as a sustainable solution to help make existing technology live its design life and provide climate change adaptation and resilience for coastal and riverine communities. This chapter presents applications of seaweed farms as an advanced nature-based mitigation approach; it also reports controlled laboratory experiments conducted at RWTH Aachen University on wave damping of seaweed types and farming structures. A soft engineering approach to designing future vegetated protection systems using seaweed as a nature-based solution can help existing coastal infrastructure design life and protect against climate-induced SLR rise and adaptation; coastal risk mitigation, ecosystem restoration, and blue bio-economic development.