The course on Coastal Engineering is included in the study plan of the master degree program in Civil Engineering (curriculum Off-shore Engineering) at the University of Bologna. The part of course that I am teaching counts 32 hours of lectures. The teacher will make extensive use of interactivity, with the options illustrated below.
Lectures include about 6 hours dedicated to solving exercises by using the personal computer, by collaborative work by students and teacher. Students will be kindly asked to bring their own personal computer to solve the exercises. Students are kindly advised to speak with me if bringing their own personal computer turns out to be not possible.
The purpose of the course is to provide an overview of techniques for preserving and recovering beaches and the shoreline in the presence of human impact. The target of the course is to learn how to design and manage beach and shoreline infrastructures and preservation strategies. The course will focus on the forcing induced by sea waves and the resulting beach morphodynamics; the impact of climate change will be discussed as well as techniques for increasing the resilience of ecosytems.
The teacher will make extensive use of interaction with the students to stimulate interest for the topic and the development of personal ideas. Interactive activities will be optional. If the students opt for them, they will contribute to the final evaluation.
Interactive activities will consist of:
- Integration and further development of the tutorials distributed by the teacher. Tutorials will be made available through a Google drive, students will have the opportunity to make comments and changes to the text. The documents resulting from the interaction between students and the teacher will be published on the web page of the teacher.
- Preparing a discussion on specific optional topics. Students will be suggested to collect additional information on a selected subject, by eventually reading scientific papers suggested by the teacher, and will be asked to present a short Powerpoint presentation (10-15 minutes) during the lectures.
- Preparing a Wikipedia entry, in English, related to Coastal Engineering.
- Preparing a 10-minute question&answer session "Challenge the teacher".
- Additional activities possibly suggested by the students.
Students that participate to the interacting activities will be asked to prepare a brief summary of their work. The teacher will give to the students the option to evaluate their interacting activities as part of their final exam. This is an opportunity to make the evaluation of the student a continuous and interactive process along the semester. For more details on interactive activities see here.
The tutorials for the course will be delivered in the form of open web pages, open media and freely accessible videos of all the lectures, for the sake of developing academic education through fully open information. Tutorials will be updated while teaching through collaborative work with the students (see below).
Tutorial web pages for the lectures:
- Coastal Engineering - The learning process adopted in the course
- Coast management and beach design - Premise
- Mechanics of sea waves
- Wave transformation
- Beach protection strategies and structures
- Beach hydrodynamics and morphodynamics
- Sea wave monitoring
- Salt water intrusion
- Design of groins
- Stability of rock and concrete armour units
- Nature based solutions for coastal protection
Tutorial web pages for the practical exercises:
- Short introduction to R and R Studio
- Exercise: application of the CERC formula. Data files reporting the geometry of the shoreline and the wave forcing. Example of R file.
The videos of the lectures are available at the link below: Playlist of Coastal Engineering Videos will be made available within one week after the lecture.
The calendar of the lectures is given here below. Please note that changes may occur. Any variation will be communicated by the teacher to the students one week earlier at the latest. If the schedule is not significantly altered the course will terminate around the beginning of May.
- Feb 28, 4 hours
- March 7, 4 hours
- March 21, 4 hours
- March 28, 4 hours
- April 18, 4 hours
- May 2, 4 hours
- May 8, 4 hours
- May 9, 4 hours
Learning outcome will be assessed through an oral examination. The exam typically lasts for about 20-30 minutes and is articulated through 3-4 questions. The student will be given the option to include interactive activities as part of the exam; in this case the duration of the oral examination may be shorter. The teacher may require to provide written response to one question and may ask to develop simple exercises in written form, involving simple calculations. One question aims to assess the ability of the student to deliver a clear and well articulated presentation (this question could be addressed with an interactive activity). Questions are related to the topics that are taught during the lectures and are described in the supporting documents. The teacher may ask questions not directly related to what has been discussed during the lecture in order to assess outstanding capabilities of the student to integrate the notions delivered by the teacher.
The highest score (30/30) is reserved to students who demonstrate a full knowledge of the notions, a very good ability to address questions through an efficient synthesis, and a very good presentation. The laude is reserved to students who demonstrate exceptional motivation and integrate the course content with additional notions by following their personal interest and attitude.
The teacher is available for a first pre-exam as soon as the lecture are finished. 3 official exam dates will be scheduled from the official closure of lecture until the end of July. Exam dates will be fixed in agreement with the students by the first week of April.
The teacher is available to provide clarifications on request, by receiving individual students or groups. Teacher can be contacted by email and will receive students after the lectures.
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