According to the Masterplan Coastal Safety (MDK & WL, 2011), which aims at protecting the Flemish coast against severe storm surges (including sea level rise), a coastal safety assessment needs to carried out every 6 years. By doing so, the risk of casualties because of such an extreme storm surge is periodically evaluated. The coastal area is therefore divided alongshore into 255 coastal sections, each being 250m wide. Every coastal section is categorised into a dike or a (protected) dune with or without habitation. The harbours are for now excluded. The third coastal safety assessment will take place in 2021. For that purpose, Flanders Hydraulics is preparing new hydraulic boundary conditions for normative storm surges and a new methodology to carry out the coastal safety assessment. This methodology consists a.o. of the modelling of beach and dune erosion, wave transformation and wave overtopping. The figure below depicts the 2014 hydraulic boundary conditions (the significant wave height and water level) of the coastal sections around the harbour of Ostend.
