In the design of coastal structures, the choice of the safety level for which the structure has to be designed is a major problem. This is also the case for vertical breakwaters. This paper applies the concept of economic optimisation to derive the appropriate safety level and at the same time the optimal geometry. Application to a design case shows that it can be economically optimal not to distribute the acceptable failure probability equally over all failure modes, but rather let one or two failure modes determine the total probability of failure.
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