News Story

COPRI Ports and Harbors Subcommittee on "Sea Level Change" – Call for Members

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ Ports and Harbors Committee is forming a new subcommittee on Sea Level Change to propose a set of design guidelines on sea-level change to the on-shore and off-shore marine design industry. This sub-committee aims its efforts toward the marine design practice industry. The committee seeks to fill a need for a more systematic approach in estimating and including sea-level change in any marine/ coastal project. For instance, while most agencies (state or federal) do suggest levels of severity for SLR, from low to high, none of them are associated to a confidence level. This falls short of most design standards that require that a well-determined return period be associated with any return level. One of the main objectives of this committee is to be able to work jointly with a wide range of industry professionals to provide such confidence levels.

Committee Objectives

As much as possible, this sub-committee will make every effort to not compete with or duplicate the large amount of data and research that has already been published by well-qualified experts at academic organizations, inter-governmental panels and state and federal entities (including the Corps of Engineers). The primary goal of the committee is to cater to the marine design industry by helping designers make solid and well-educated decisions regarding the inclusion of sea-level change when designing on-shore or off-shore coastal/marine structures. The stated goal of this committee is to leverage this pool of existing knowledge and synthesize it in a form that is readily implementable by structural and coastal engineers. These efforts would be performed in concert with relevant agencies/authorities, and could potentially involve state and federal agencies. Ultimately, the work of this sub-committee would be part of an existing engineering standard (for instance: as an ASCE special section on SLR for the Design of Marine Structures). For instance, we propose to include charts, tables and graphics that provide quick reference to say, sea-level change over a certain period of time; risk level for various scenarios; guidelines on establishing a value for sea-level change; best practices for estimating return period of future storm surge and tidal variations; and permit application requirements.

For more information and to get involved in this subcommittee, please contact the subcommittee Chair, Jean Toilliez. or Doug Gaffney.

revised 31 March 2012