SouthWest UK coast

Other wave statistics

The CreamT project converted the prototype WireWall wave overtopping field measurement system into a ruggedised monitoring system between August 2020 and August 2023. The system was deployed for up to a year in two high-energy coastal environments along the Southwest coast, UK (Dawlish and Penzance). The system was designed to have a 3-month maintenance interval and was programmed to measure overtopping condition ±3hrs either side of predicted high tide. The wave-by-wave overtopping data were telemetered to the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) every 10 minutes. At the time of the project, the coastal structures at these sites comprised a vertical sea wall with small return lip or curve at the top. Both sea walls were fronted by a beach. During the project period the Dawlish beach levels exposed a concreate toe at the base of the wall. In Penzance, the beach covered the sea wall toe and was higher in the southwest monitoring location. The system was designed at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and had previously been validated in HR Wallingford’s flume facility and field tested with Sefton Council (https://www.channelcoast.org/northwest/). During CreamT, three different system configurations were deployed: full WireWall systems each with an array of six capacitance sensors; smaller WireWand systems with two capacitance sensors mounted on a single pole to detect overtopping at hazard hotspots; and a WaveWell using a single sensor on the face of the sea wall. Six datasets are available from the CreamT project. These contain delayed mode data from: 1) a WireWall deployed at the crest of the sea wall in Dawlish; 2) a WireWand deployed at the wall just seaward of the railway line in Dawlish; 3) a WireWand deployed at the fence just inland of the railway line in Dawlish; 4) a WaveWell deployed on the face of the sea wall in Dawlish; 5) a WireWall deployed at the crest of the sea wall in Penzance near Queen’s Hotel, and; 6) a WireWall deployed at the crest of the sea wall in Penzance near the Lidal store at Wherrytown. The datasets in Dawlish provide information about the inland distribution of overtopping, and the two datasets in Penzance provide information about the alongshore variability in overtopping hazard. These data can be used alongside the regional monitoring data available from the Southwest Regional Monitoring Programme to investigate the drivers of wave overtopping. All these data can be visualised in a hazard dashboard developed by the BODC and hosted on JASMIN, https://coastalhazards.app.noc.ac.uk/. This project was delivered by the National Oceanography Centre in collaboration with BODC and the University of Plymouth under NERC Grant References NE/V002538/1 and NE/V002589/1. Project partners were Network Rail, Southwest Regional Monitoring Programme, Environment Agency and Channel Coastal Observatory.

National Oceanography Centre (Southampton)
University of Southampton Waterfront Campus European Way
Southampton
Hampshire
SO14 3ZH
United Kingdom