A growing body of literature is providing evidence for the capabilities of nature-based solutions, particularly vegetation such as mangroves or marsh grasses, to mitigate coastal flood hazards. These engineering services, combined with these systems’ ecological, environmental, and economic benefits, make them viable solutions for shore protection, either alone or as part of a hybrid green-gray solution. However, the performance of these systems for engineering parameters of interest must be better understood to broaden the acceptance and implementation of these nature-based solutions. This presentation will describe field and physical modeling experiments to quantify the performance of mangroves for wave height attenuation and the subsequent wave force reduction and wave overtopping mitigation for application into coastal engineering design.

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Tori Tomiczek is an Associate Professor in the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering Department at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA). She earned her B.S. at the University of Florida and PhD at the University of Notre Dame. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Oregon State University before joining the Ocean Engineering faculty at USNA in 2017.

 

Dr. Tomiczek’s research focuses on coastal engineering and coastal resilience. She has participated in field reconnaissance surveys evaluating damage and recovery following tropical cyclone events, and she has also enjoyed working on physical model experiments at USNA, OSU, and Kyoto University. Dr. Tomiczek is particularly interested in the capability of mangroves and other nature-based infrastructure to provide engineering services such as wave height attenuation, force reduction, and overtopping mitigation. Her research seeks to characterize the performance of these systems to inform design guidance and mitigate damage due to chronic and acute coastal flood hazards.