Soft engineering—a firm future?

摘要

'Soft-engineered' coastal defences are now a viable alternative to concrete seawalls, but gentler effects and huge volumes of material mean that sus-tainability is not necessarily the key to public acceptance. Cambridgeshire consultant Mike Child explains. Soft engineering— building beaches, sand dunes and saltmarshes— is now recognized as a valuable method of protecting coastlines from erosion and flooding. Unlike hard-engineered concrete seawalls, which fight the energy of waves and tides, soft engineering aims to work with nature by dispersing energy.