Historically, the main purpose of coastal defence was seen as preventing or reducing coastal disasters through the construction of seawalls and other 'hard' structures. More recently, 'soft' countermeasures involving beach management, together with effective systems of population evacuation have become increasingly important. Where structures are regarded as necessary, an integrated system of shore protection may be employed linking a combination of features such as seawalls, submerged breakwaters, artificial reefs, beach nourishment and so on. There have been many studies on wave transformation, set-up, runup and overtopping. Various prediction formulae and design diagrams have been proposed. Some have been based on tests involving regular waves; others involved random waves. And sometimes the particular application falls outside the range of the available data. The present study aims to extend previous work and to establish the characteristics of random wave runup and representative runup values for seawalls located with their toes close to shorelines and involving some cases in which the seawalls are fronted by artificial reefs.
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