RT journal article
T1 Coastal Flooding Hazards in Northern Portugal: A Practical Large-Scale Evaluation of Total Water Levels and Swash Regimes
A1 Carneiro Barros, José Eduardo
A1 Majidi, Ajab Gul
A1 Plomaritis, Theocharis
A1 Fazeres Ferradosa, Tiago
A1 Rosa Santos, Paulo
A1 Taveira Pinto, Francisco
A2 Física Aplicada
K1 coastal flooding
K1 floods
K1 climate change
K1 wave overtopping
K1 coastal hazards
K1 coastal studies
K1 flood risk
AB The northern Portuguese coast has been increasingly subjected to wave-inducedcoastal flooding, highlighting a critical need for comprehensive overwash assessment inthe region. This study systematically evaluates the total water levels (TWLs) and swashregimes over a 120 km stretch of the northern coast of Portugal. Traditional approaches tooverwash assessment often rely on detailed models and location-specific data, which canbe resource-intensive. The presented methodology addresses these limitations by offeringa pragmatic balance between accuracy and practicality, suitable for extended coastal areaswith reduced human and computational resources. A coastal digital terrain model wasused to extract essential geomorphological features, including the dune toe, dune crest,and/or crown of defense structures, as well as the sub-aerial beach profile. These featureshelp establish a critical threshold for flooding, alongside assessments of beach slope andother relevant parameters. Additionally, a wave climate derived from a SWAN regionalmodel was integrated, providing a comprehensive time-series hindcast of sea-states from1979 to 2023. The wave contribution to TWL was considered by using the wave runup,which was calculated using different empirical formulas based on SWAN’s outputs. Astronomicaltides and meteorological surge—the latter reconstructed using a long short-termmemory (LSTM) neural network—were also integrated to form the TWL. This integrationof geomorphological and oceanographic data allows for a straightforward evaluation ofswash regimes and consequently overwash potential. The accuracy of various empiricalpredictors for wave runup, a primary hydrodynamic factor in overwash processes, wasassessed. Several reports from hazardous events along this stretch were used as validationfor this method. This study further delineates levels of flooding hazard—ranging fromswash and collision to overwash at multiple representative profiles along the coast. Thisregional-scale assessment contributes to a deeper understanding of coastal flooding dynamicsand supports the development of targeted, effective coastal management strategiesfor the northern Portuguese coast.
PB MDPI
SN 2073-4441
YR 2025
FD 2025-05
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/38021
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/38021
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 09-nov-2026