; Riccardo Musella; Shimrit Perkol-Finkel; Andrew Rella; Ido Sella
Abstract
Climate change and coastal populations are driving demand for sustainable coastal development. The Australian government has established initiatives to manage risks associated with sea-level rises. These recognise that many coastal infrastructures have been built without consideration for marine life, resulting in poor ecological performance. We present an alternative science-based approach which enables development, whilst also bringing life to concrete. Further, the approach results in enhanced structural performance. Marine structures, like ports, and coastal defence structures often displace diverse tidal habitats, replacing them with barren habitats. These hard defence systems have significantly lower environmental value than natural habitats and are also less resilient and adaptive compared to natural barriers like coral reefs. Eco-engineering solutions of coastal infrastructure aims to bridge sustainability and development by enhancing the biological and ecological performance of hard solutions, without compromising their functional capabilities. Here we further develop this approach, in which eco-engineering aims not only to enhance biological performance for the environment’s sake, but to harness natural processes to increase strength, durability and adaptivity of the structure. It achieves this through enabling growth of flora and fauna in general, and of biocalcification in particular. Testing of ECOncrete bio-enhanced concrete technology has occurred in temperate and tropical ocean environments, akin to the broad range of environments across Australia. It has also undergone assessment for conformance to Australian Standards. Using case studies, we provide quantitative data and comparison to typical concrete structures. Results show the ability of bio-enhanced structures to increase biodiversity, resilience and adaptivity of the marine infrastructure. Access the article here ->