Giuseppe Roberto Tomasicchio

A multi-layer capping of a coastal area contaminated with materials dangerous to health

Environmental protection efforts in coastal areas recognise contaminated materials as a critical element of the aquatic ecosystem requiring careful evaluation for their potential remediation. This article considers aspects related to the design of a multi-layer capping for a contaminated coastal area. The area is located just south of the urbanised region of Bari, Puglia Region, along the Adriatic coast of Italy. This area received massive displacement of cement asbestos from residuals of a factory producing concrete pipelines for aqueducts and asbestos boards. The designed reclamation has been proposed in order to allow reuse of the 2.4-km-long coastline for recreational activities. For this purpose, the main objective has been to face aspects related to the problems posed by the design of the adopted capping structure and various constraints related to the natural environment. An extensive numerical study has been carried out to verify the effects of the planned intervention. The local wave climate, wave- and wind-induced circulation, the impact on water quality, and the biological system have been investigated. At present, the intervention is under construction.

A direct scaling analysis for the sea level rise

The estimation of long-term sea level variability is of primary importance for a climate change assessment. Despite the value of the subject, no scientific consensus has yet been reached on the existing acceleration in observed values. The existence of this acceleration is crucial for coastal protection planning purposes. The absence of the acceleration would enhance the debate on the general validity of current future projections. Methodologically, the evaluation of the acceleration is a controversial and still open discussion, reported in a number of review articles, which illustrate the state-of-art in the field of sea level research. In the present paper, the well-proven direct scaling analysis approach is proposed in order to describe the long-term sea level variability at 12 worldwide-selected tide gauge stations. For each of the stations, it has been shown that the long-term sea level variability exhibits a trimodal scaling behaviour, which can be modelled by a power law with three different pairs of shape and scale parameters. Compared to alternative methods in literature, which take into account multiple correlated factors, this simple method allows to reduce the uncertainties on the sea level rise parameters estimation.

DUNE EROSION AND OVERWASH IN LARGE-SCALE FLUME EXPERIMENTS

The present paper gives a general overview of the large-scale physical model experiments performed at the LIM/UPC in Barcelona, within the EU-Hydralab III Integrated Infrastructure Initiative. The model tests have been carried out in a flume with a sandy dune exposed to a combination of water levels and wave conditions. Different regimes of wave attacks on the sandy beach/dune system have been investigated. In particular, the study provides a unique set of large-scale physical data concerning the wave-induced dune overwash. Measurements of hydrodynamics, sediment concentrations and beach-dune profile evolution have been carried out. Profile measurements have been used to calibrate and validate a numerical model (Kobayashi et al. 2007) to predict beach-dune profile modifications over the near-shore region. The numerical model is shown to be in agreement with the experimental data.

Velocity Profiles at the Swash Zone

Velocity profiles at the swash zone have been sampled with an ADVP during a large scale experiment on a fixed bed beach. The unique set of data permits to observe the time variation of the velocity distributions and to contribute to the debate concerning the variation of the friction factor, f , in a swash cycle. The analyses of the velocity data with the ballistic model and with the Law of the Wall have given opposite results. It is shown that if the pressure gradient is considered, the friction factor is expected to be larger at uprush than at downrush. Finally, for the adopted beach characteristics and at transects above the still water level shoreline, it is assumed f =0.016 at the uprush, and f = 0.009 at the downrush.