Matt Eliot

Ask a coastal engineer and an oceanographer the same question, and you’ll get two different answers. They're both right, and yet they're both wrong. I was recently asked to look at near-bed currents on the Sydney Shelf. I'd done my reading (as a coastal scientist) and it was a clear slam-dunk that the shelf is wave-dominated with tiny tidal currents. Following a similar method I'd applied on the Gold Coast in ~12-m water depth, I started to evaluate the considerable record of...

Western Australia's Capes Coast illustrates how inner shelf and nearshore features can modify sediment transfers: it is not just wave-driven littoral transport along the shore! The inner shelf structure provides a crucial influence on shelf-coast sediment exchange. Here rocky formations provide a spectacular coast, robust under severe storm waves. However, the sandy beaches and dunes have reduced resilience due to low sand supply, and under projected sea level rise, their structural controls...

Masterplanning is a phase done early in development, aimed to collate critical, multi-disciplinary elements that will enable a project hold together, without reaching the stage of detailed engineering for all elements. Foreshore masterplanning can be a challenge, as shores change over time. Implications for getting it 'wrong', even by a few metres, can include significant impact to foreshore amenity, or high costs to undertake retroactive stabilisation. It is not always easy to get all...