Projects

Overall structure

The SOURCE project has the following transdisciplinary structure:

Two dedicated, innovative nourishments along the Dutch coast are our Living Labs (WP 1). One will be realized at the beginning of the project such that the monitoring data, together with other data-sets, can feed into WP 2 that is focused on improved understanding and modeling of the coastal ecosystem.

The other Living Lab nourishment will be co-designed during the SOURCE project, and the lessons learned are especially input to the socio-economic WP 3 and the integrative WP 4.

WP 2 includes understanding of nourishment morpodynamics and sediment pathways (WP 2.1), investigation of ecological effects and the opportunities for coastal landscaping (WP 2.2), exploration of the possibilities of using alternative non-native nourishment

material (WP 2.3) and quantification and prediction of nourishment impacts on coastal state indicators (WP 2.4).

These new insights into the coastal ecosystem will find their way to – and are informed by – the stakeholders through an interactive sand nourishment game that will be built in WP 3.1. This will lead to an improved insight in stakeholder needs and perspectives that will be input to a methodology to determine the spatial quality (WP 3.2) and social costs and benefits (WP 3.3) of sand nourishment strategies.

All comes together in WP 4: the co-creation of sand nourishments strategies that enable a resilient multifunctional Dutch coastal flood defense with high socio-economic and natural values.

Work packages

The objectives of the Work packages are:

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WP 1 - Living Lab Nourishments

To design, monitor and learn – with stakeholders – from two nourishments along the Dutch coast

WP 2.1 - Quantification of Sediment Pathways

To quantify coastal sediment transport pathways in the vicinity of a nourishment and within the Dutch coastal system given the current nourishment strategy
To identify relevant timescales and shifts in sediment connectivity within the coastal system for potential future nourishment scenarios

WP 2.2 - Ecological Effects and Coastal Landscaping

To gain insight into long-term ecological effects of sand nourishments and methods to mitigate or even offset negative impacts by smart coastal landscape design

WP 2.3 - Exploration of Non-native Sediments for Coastal Nourishments

To explore the use of non-native sediments for coastal nourishments

WP 2.4 - Predictive Modeling of Coastal Nourishment Impacts

To develop numerical models to predict the nourishment lifetime, the spreading of nourished sand and the cumulative impact on key coastal state indicators

WP 3.1 - Sand Nourishment Game

To create an interactive gaming environment that enables collaboratively exploring and experimenting with nourishment strategies to foster shared understanding and learning

WP 3.2 - Spatial Quality of Nourished Coastal Landscapes

To evaluate how the spatial quality (user value, experiential value, future value) of the local nourished coastal landscape is perceived by different stakeholder groups (inhabitants, business owners, coastal managers)
To determine the spatial quality of different potential future nourishment strategies
To understand how stakeholder perception affects the support for future multi-functional nourishment strategies

WP 3.3 - Social Cost-Benefit Analysis

To develop and apply a monetary social cost-benefit analysis method to assess coastal sand nourishment strategies, specifically:
• To examine preferences of the general public for several non-market social and environmental benefits and costs that result from large-scale sand nourishment, e.g., recreational benefits, flood-risk reduction and non-use values, and how these benefits and costs are distributed across stakeholders (Task 3.3a)
• To evaluate the economic viability of sand nourishment strategies in the Netherlands based on a temporally and spatially explicit extended cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that includes the elicited non-market, monetized benefits of sand nourishment (Task 3.3b)

WP 4 - Sand Nourishment Strategy Development in the (inter)national context

To establish an integral approach to co-design multifunctional coastal sand nourishments strategies