Extreme Responses using NewWave – Forces, Overtopping and Runup in Coastal Engineering

The ENFORCE project aims to investigate the coastal response to an extreme wave event, where the extreme event is modelled as a focused wave. The coastal response may be the extent of wave runup on an idealised beach, the volume of water overtopping a coastal structure or the force exerted on the structure by a wave impact. Previous experience has shown that a focused wave is able to reproduce the properties of an extreme event within a random process, without the need for lengthy experiments or numerical simulations. The NewWave profile has been successfully validated as a design wave in offshore engineering application, and this approach will be applied to extreme waves approaching the coast.