Committee

William Allsop

William Allsop was Technical Director for Maritime Structures at HR Wallingford, responsible for consultancy and research studies, optimisation and design of breakwaters, sea walls, revetments, and a wide range of shoreline and related structures. He supervised testing in laboratories in UK, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Denmark, France, Turkey and Nigeria. Recent studies have included work on major LNG terminals in the Pacific and Atlantic, the Turner Gallery at Margate, and advising the US government on wave forces on coastal bridges damaged by hurricanes, and on wave overtopping.

He has a long-term interest in historic breakwaters around the UK, particularly at Alderney and Wick, now cemented by his PhD studies at Edinburgh. At William Allsop Consulting, since 2018, he has specialised in forensic analysis of designs/construction with projects in India, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Australia, Chile, the Channel Islands and the UK. His research results are published in major handbooks or standards, and in the major coastal conferences (ICCE and Breakwaters), ICE journals on Maritime Engineering, Forensic Engineering, Engineering History, and in Coastal Engineering.

Philip Barber

Phil’s career spans 50 years commencing in a Local Authority in 1966. Following chartered status in 1973, the career focus has been on coastal engineering and coastal processes. A return to University in 1976 for a Masters's Degree was followed by a PhD. in 1981 where the research was on the local Authority's coastal process problems. In 1984 a move was made to National Maritime Institute (later BMT) before setting up in private practice in 1989. Key achievements include the invention of the ‘fishtail breakwater’, the early use of mixed beach nourishment using quarried and marine sources, the development of a measurement system for the surf zone, the determination of monitoring protocols to satisfy environmental requirements in sensitive areas and the integration of sediment transport models with monitoring to optimise confidence in the forecasting of the estuary and coastal evolution. Recent work has focussed on understanding the evolution of nearshore bank and channel systems using inductive modelling to consider impacts on shoreline evolution and management and the use of single-layer rock armour and rolled concrete in coastal defences.    

Caroline Barford

Caroline has spent her career as a Civil Engineer within local government, with the last 20 years in the maritime sector starting when she returned to Portsmouth (where she gained her degree) as Port Engineer with the council owned Portsmouth International Port including client supervision for the construction of the Spinnaker Tower before moving to coastal works. Throughout her career she has worked the whole construction cycle from identification of works, procurement, construction as well as the maintenance phase acting for the local authorities as Client. She has worked for Coastal Partners and its predecessors since its inception as a local authority shared service for Coastal Works.

As part of her roles within the shared service she led the Coastal Flood Response Management for the partnership area which covers Portsmouth and the surrounding local authorities for over a decade working with Emergency Planners. The work of Coastal Partners is community focussed working for the respective local authorities to bring projects which improve coastal protection and enhance the lives of residents and visitors along the coast and harbours of south east Hampshire. She is currently the NEC Supervisor for the Southsea Coastal Scheme, the largest coastal scheme under local authority control currently, where she leads the construction supervision for the Client.

Professor Tom Bruce

In addition to his role as College of Science and Engineering Dean International Students, Tom Bruce is Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Tom’s background is in fluid mechanics, with particular focus on coastal engineering. He has been active in research on wave overtopping since the late 1990s. Many of his team’s outputs are now integrated within the European Wave Overtopping Manual, or EurOtop, which is the standard engineering guidance on the topic for many European countries and used worldwide. In his teaching, Tom specialises in fluid mechanics and sustainable energy

Simon Burchett

Simon is a technical director with Mott MacDonald Ltd, UK national expert on CEN/TC250/SC1/WG6 and Chair of CB/502/-/10 planning the update of BS6349 Part 7

The existing edition of BS6349 Part 7 Code of practice for the design of breakwaters was published in 1991. Following a review, it was found to be out of date and a panel chaired by Simon was formed in 2017 to undertake an update. By this time, CEN/TC250 had initiated a working group (SC1/WG6) to create the new structural Eurocode defining actions on coastal structures which has a significant overlap of scope of application with Part 7.  

Simon is the UK national expert on CEN/TC250/SC1/WG6 and work on updating Part 7 is expected to recommence when the outcome of the enquiry process for the Eurocode is clear in 2025. Simon will provide and update on issues to be addressed in the Part 7 update.

Kevin Burgess

Kevin Burgess has been working in consultancy across a wide range of coastal engineering and shoreline management projects since 1986 in various technical and management roles at Halcrow, CH2M, and now Jacobs. His technical experience covers strategic coastal planning and coastal process analysis, through to detailed design and R&D, contributing to several technical publications. Kevin has been a regular speaker at many national and international conferences, and a member of the organising committee for this conference since 1998, taking on the role of conference chair in 2017.

Experienced Construction Project Manager with a demonstrated history of working within the construction industry. I have just joined Mackleys and will be working on the Pevensey Coastal Defence Project. Looking forward taking on a new direction within the Marine civil sector.

I have recently worked within the domestic refurbishment sector, and over the last 10 years I have been involved in the civils sector primarily for Southen Water and South East Water carrying out drainage, utilies and concrete works.

I have also worked on various Rail projects around London for key rail contractors on UTX projects as well as commerical refurbishments.

I can adapt to all environments and have cross sector skills. Ability to work with all stakeholders and consider myself to be a key communicator inorder to get the project completed on time, in budget and delivering a quality project.

Project Estimation and Safety Management Systems. Organising labour and resources materials.

Nadia Genovese

Nadia is a chartered engineer in the both the UK and Italy. She has been working for COWI since early 2007 in the Coastal and Maritime division in Denmark, UAE, Qatar, the USA and now the UK branch office. She is specialized in the design of rubble mound structures using rock or concrete elements and has worked on revetment structures for ports and harbours, coastal protection schemes and waterfront developments in different parts of the world.

She is the go-to person in COWI for scour protection design for offshore wind structures, bridges, tunnels and jetties and has performed several studies of scour hole/time development around jacket foundations and complex bridge foundations. Nadia has a hydraulic background and has also an interest in the design of intake/outfalls with weirs, pipelines, diffusers and several other hydraulic structures. She is part of the Excellence Team in COWI developing coastal related standardized tools and methods used throughout the company and making sure that COWI is on top of the latest technologies and research breakthroughs.

Carl Green

Carl Green has more than 30 years’ experience in the design, construction and operation of coastal defences, working for consultancies and the Environment Agency before taking up his current role at Wyre Council. He is responsible for the delivery and maintenance of coastal schemes in the district and leads the council’s emergency-response team.  

Having already delivered more than £120m-worth of projects for the borough, Green is implementing a £52m beach and dune management programme. He is also leading a flood and coast innovation project.

An ICE member and a royal engineering officer in the Army Reserve, Green chairs the North West and North Wales Coastal Group.

Jim Hutchison

Jim Hutchison is an ICE Fellow with more than 35 years’ experience in flood and coastal erosion risk management. Having worked for consulting engineers and held senior roles at Defra and the Environment Agency, he serves as Balfour Beatty’s business lead across the resilience and adaptation sector.

Hutchison, who also sits on the organising committee of the ICE’s Coasts, Marine Structures and Breakwaters conference, is an Environment Agency appointee on the Trent Regional Flood and Coastal Committee.

His other memberships include those of Brunel University’s industry advisory panel, the Association of Drainage Authorities’ advisory group and a northern European network of engineering experts known as the Kring.

Lars Johanning

Professor Johanning is a leading researcher at the University of Exeter with an international recognition in the field of ocean technology with a focus towards offshore renewable energy. He is Deputy Head of Engineering and Academic Lead of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Group and has led multiple challenging research projects to a successful outcome that has been published in over 190 peer reviewed book chapters, journal and conference papers, as well as three patents, dedicated to ORE.

His research include activities such as loading and dynamic response of mono-towers in steep and breaking waves (GR/N04522/01) and hydrodynamic studies on station keeping principles for marine renewable devices within SuperGen UKCMER (GR/S26958/01), hydrodynamic analysis to support development of aquaculture systems (BB/M005208/1) and Supergen-Marine (UKCMER) grant (EP/M014738/1), addressing mooring and reliability for ORE devices. His current main project includes the UK-CHINA ResIn project (EP/R007519/1)) assessing innovative solutions to enhance motion characterises and loads on FOW turbines; and the Flotant H2020 project (815289) developing innovative and integrated Floating Offshore Wind solution.

Professor Johanning has long standing relation with Chinese organisations focusing on research & development of UK-China partnerships in Offshore Renewable Energy and currently holds a visiting post as Associated Dean of Yantai Research Institution, Harbin Engineering University and is the international co-chair (Task Team #5 - Renewable Energy) at the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (www.cciced.net).

Alice Johnson

Alice is a Civil Engineer in the Rivers and Coasts sector with 20 years’ experience. She has been involved in developing numerical models for a malnourishment to protect three key infrastructure sites. This builds on a background of developing modelling tools for the erosion of soft cliffs around the UK, contributing knowledge from her PhD in developing probabilistic beach modelling. She has recently worked on a range of projects including technical lead for the Exmouth Coastal Defence Scheme and the design and construction of Mamhead Slipway at Exmouth. Mamhead Slipway is located in challenging conditions in the entrance of the Exe Estuary where the previous slipway had been undermined and become unusable. The constructed solution involves a two compartment sheet pile cofferdam and shore works including flood and retaining walls, within a restricted site.

Alice led the design of Borth including extensive beach nourishment and rock control structures together with two offshore reefs. This involved numerical and physical modelling, funding justification, through to the application of licences and consents and supervision of construction on site. Prior to this Alice has carried out several business cases for appraisals and was involved in the development of the Appraisal Guidance for government funding of projects.

Richard Nunn

Richard Nunn has been working in the water and flood risk management sector for 40 years. Nearly 20 of these have been with the Environment Agency, where he initially served as operations manager for project delivery across the broad range of fluvial and coastal schemes in its capital programme.

More recently, he’s chaired the agency’s large project review group, which provides technical assurance for all major flood risk management projects and supports Defra in any submissions to the Cabinet Office.

Nunn has also served on the organising committees of previous Breakwaters and Coastal Management conferences held by the ICE in France and the UK.

Chris Patterson

Chris graduated from The University of Edinburgh with an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering in 1996.  Since then he has worked for Jacobs (formerly the Babtie Group) almost exclusively in their Ports and Maritime Division in Scotland. 

Chris now leads Jacobs’ Nuclear and Defence Ports and Maritime team in the UK overseeing an experienced group of professionals based mainly in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Chris has worked on a wide variety of marine projects throughout his career including work on naval and commercial ports and dockyards, container terminals, ferry terminals, fishing harbours and marinas as well as the inspection, assessment and repair of a wide range of maritime facilities and coastal defence structures.

Projects in which Chris has had a major involvement include Freeport Container Terminal Expansion in the Bahamas, Castletownbere Fishery Harbour Extension, Rosyth International Container Terminal and numerous Naval Base developments and upgrades, most recently to accommodate the navy’s two new Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers.

Chris has been a member of the ICE Coasts, Marine Structures and Breakwaters Conference Organising Committee since 2007.

Alison Raby

Alison Raby is Professor of Environmental Fluid Mechanics at the University of Plymouth, where she leads the COAST Engineering Research Group. Alison is an expert on the interactions of extreme waves with coastal structures, having obtained her doctorate in extreme wave overtopping at the University of Oxford. She has recently led the EPSRC and UK General Lighthouse Authority-funded STORMLAMP project, a collaboration with UCL and Exeter University that has shed light on the structural response of rock lighthouses to wave impacts.

She has played a vital role in a number of overseas post-disaster missions with the UK Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team, aimed at uncovering reasons for the severity of destruction following tsunami inundation. In the laboratory her work has led to the verification of a design wave, representative of extreme waves in the coastal zone, that informs extreme wave run up and overtopping structures. She is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. When not professionally interacting with waves she enjoys sea swimming which provides a different perspective on the marine environment.

Stephen Richardson

Stephen has worked at HR Wallingford since completing his PhD in 2002, focussing technically on the execution of research and consultancy studies associated with the testing, analysis, design and optimisation of maritime structures.

He is currently Group Manager for Equipment, Technology and Innovation, responsible for the design, manufacturing and delivery of equipment across a portfolio which contains: wave generation, absorption and data acquisition systems; remote control survey platforms; and following the recent acquisition of Cussons Technology’s Marine Division also marine hydrodynamic instrumentation including dynamometers, balances, carriages and cavitation tunnels. He has been a member of the ICE Maritime Expert Panel, ICE Maritime Engineering Journal Advisory Panel and a member of the ICE Coasts, Marine Structures and Breakwaters Organising Committee since 2012.

Siong Hong Ting

Over the past 15 years, Ting has been involved in the design and supervision of coastal structures such as breakwaters, revetments, groynes, wave walls, and related coastal infrastructure.

Throughout his career, he has worked in several large-scale international projects in port development, land reclamation, and coastal defence schemes.

Marisa Ackhurst

Maria has 20 years’ experience in the management and design of marine and port structures. Her design experience is typically in concrete and steel structures.

Her project experience includes small- and large-scale marine projects in Africa, the Middle East, Indian Ocean Islands and South-East Asia. She has worked for a marine contractor before moving into the consulting engineering field. She enjoys staying up to date with the latest research on topics within her field and then trying to fill the gap between research and real -life applications.

Her ICE design guide, Design of Vertical Gravity Sea and Quay Walls has recently been published. Furthermore, she regularly presents a guest lecture at the University of Stellenbosch on this topic. She has also presented case studies at conferences. Marisa is an active PIANC member, contributing to working groups and currently fulfilling the role of secretary for the South African branch.

Leopoldo Franco

Leopoldo is full professor of Coastal Engineering at the University of Rome 3, Italy (formerly at Polytechnic of Milan 1987-96), now also within the new course of Ocean Engineering at Ostia.

For nearly 40 years he carried out advanced field measurements, laboratory investigations and mathematical models within national and EU funded projects (eg.MAST-PROVERBS-DELOS-CLASH-FLOODSITE) in maritime hydraulics and coastal structures described in over 230 technical-scientific papers and manuals.

Research topics include wave overtopping at breakwaters, caissons, wave analysis and prediction, shoreline modelling, hydraulic design of breakwater, harbours and marinas, history of maritime engineering. He is PIANC delegate and consultant-designer at MODIMAR, Rome for various projects of ports and breakwaters in Italy and abroad. Attended all ICE conferences since 1985. Designated chairman for ICCE2024 in Rome.

Javier López Lara

Javier López Lara is an associate professor at the University of Cantabria (UC). He is also responsible for the Hydrodynamics and Coastal Infrastructures Group of IHCantabria. Javier graduated as a Civil Engineer (1998) from the University of Cantabria and obtained his PhD in 2002 from the same university.

After holding various positions as a researcher at the University of Cantabria and at Cornell University (USA), he obtained a position as “Ramón y Cajal” (2008-2012) in the Department of Water Science and Technology at UC, where he is currently a sub-director. Javier has developed his research in the field of wave hydrodynamics, specializing also surf zone hydrodynamics and wave-structure interactions, using both experimental and numerical methods, the latter focusing mainly on CFD codes.

In recent years he has extended his research to environmental flows, hydrodynamics of aquatic ecosystems and hydraulics. Through his research he was awarded the Modesto Vigueras Prize 2004, granted by the Technical Association of Ports and Coastal Areas, Spanish branch of the International Ports Association (PIANC) and the International Research Prize “Paepe-Willems” (PIANC), in 2005, granted to researchers under 40 years old.

Javier is currently Principal Investigator in several projects funded by the Spanish Science Ministry, competitive projects financed by the Spanish Innovation Ministry and different EU Projects. He has published 52 SCI research papers and 8 book chapters. He has advised 45 MSc and bachelor thesis and 12 PhD dissertations. He has coauthored more than one hundred national and international congress communications.

Mingwei Li

Mingwei is mainly engaged in the research of the design method of integrated breakwater and wave energy, the development and utilization of offshore renewable energy, the operation and maintenance of intelligent twin construction, the advanced intelligent optimization algorithm and forecast technology, etc.

He has undertaken more than 20 projects for the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key R&D Program of China, Science and Technology programs of the Ministry of Transport, and science and technology programs of the State Oceanic Administration. He has published more than 40 academic papers, including 2 highly cited papers and 19 SCI papers. And he has published 4 academic monographs; there were 13 authorized invention patents and 10 software Copyrights.

He has won second prize of Heilongjiang Provincial Water Conservancy Science and Technology Award, first prize in the Zhoukou Science and Technology Progress Award, and second prize of Henan Provincial Transportation Science and Technology Award. He is also a member of Heilongjiang Provincial Hydraulic Committee, deputy editor of International Journal of Applied Evolutionary Computation and guest editor of the Special edition of the Special issue STLF in Energies College of Shipbuilding Engineering & Deputy Director, Institute of Ma.

Benoit Meulewaeter

A highly competent and motivated civil engineer with an MSc in Engineering from the Ecole centrale des arts et metiers ECAM and from Universite Catholique de Louvain currently employed as Head of Design - Middle East at Besix. Acting CTO for BESIX3D of which Benoit has been a Co-Founder.

Extensive experience in Design and Built, BOT, Marine and Geotechnics engineering, Project Management, 3DCP, working in complex environments on both greenfield and brownfield projects. I am also a keen promoter of sustainable and digital development practices and have developed a strong commitment to environmental protection and safety.

A confident and hardworking individual with strong communication skills who always strives to achieve goals in a challenging and pressured environment

Gillian Millar

Gillian is the Maritime & Coastal Service Line Leader for GHD in North America. She has 20 years of coastal and ports project management and design experience gained across four continents. Her professional experience includes management of multidisciplinary teams, metocean studies, numerical modeling, mooring, navigation and downtime assessment, coastal design and shoreline management.

Gillian started her career in the UK working on Shoreline Management Plans, moved to the US, Caribbean and Australia, before returning to California where she is now based.

Heidi P. Moritz

Heidi received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Valparaiso University in 1981 and a Master of Engineering degree in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M in 1991. Prior to working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), she spent 2 years working in Thailand on water resources projects for the U.S. Peace Corps.

She worked at the Chicago District, USACE, for 8 years as a hydraulic/coastal engineer and at the Portland District, USACE, for 27 years. She is a member of the Coastal Working Group Advisory Board and has served as a member of the ICE Maritime Engineering Journal Advisory Panel.

Heidi’s primary areas of work with the Corps of Engineers include navigation structure design, risk and reliability analysis of coastal structures, shoreline protection and coastal structure design, and planning and adapting to climate change. Since 2008, Heidi has been working with Dr. Kate White in the Responses to Climate Change program, specifically to develop USACE adaptation guidance for Corps projects to sea level change.

Recent work has focused on understanding and developing methods to describe non-stationary loading and exposure descriptions over a project life for the range of project types within the U.S. Corps of Engineers areas of responsibility.

Norberto Carlos Nadal-Caraballo

Norberto is a research civil engineer and leader of the Coastal Hazards Group (CHG) at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (ERDC-CHL) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. His main areas of expertise are coastal storm hazard analysis, flood risk assessment, extreme storm climatology, and coastal structures.

He leads the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Coastal Hazards System (CHS) program to quantify coastal flooding, surge, waves, wind, rainfall, and related hazards due to hurricanes and other extreme storms for all U.S. coastlines, including Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Hawaii.

He is also leading efforts to develop guidelines and software tools for probabilistic hazard analysis, consequence analysis, and stochastic design of coastal structures such as levees, flood walls, and breakwaters. Norberto is the author or co-author of over 40 technical publications, and has contributed to development of coastal hazards guidance for institutions like the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He also serves as adjunct faculty at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez. Since joining the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2007, Dr. Nadal-Caraballo has received numerous professional honors and awards, including the Great Minds in STEM’s 2015 Civil Engineering Award, and the 2016 ERDC Engineer of the Year.

Scarlett Vásquez Paulus

Scarlett is a Civil/Hydraulic Engineer with 20 years of experience in water resources, flood risk, hydraulic design, in Chile and abroad. Over the last 4 years she has been leading the technical team in the INH working in maritime protection structures, artificial beaches, wave forecasting, fluvial studies, bridge scour protection, debris flow, among other subjects. All studies based in physical and numerical modelling, field work and interacting with other disciplines.

David Todd

David works as a Principal Port and Marine Engineering Consultant for PortTechMarine Pty Ltd, based in Perth, Western Australia. He provides technical management and specialised engineering services to clients with port, harbour and coastal projects and assets.

David has experience in all phases of marine projects, from planning to construction, maintenance and repair. He also provides specialist engineering advice for breakwaters, seawalls, coastal studies, wharves, dredging, ports, navigation aids, marinas, desalination plant intakes and outfalls, pipeline shore crossings, scour protection, coastal and landside infrastructure.

Recent projects have included the asset maintenance of breakwaters and seawalls at North Queensland Bulk Ports in Queensland, construction of port facilities for the Wheatstone LNG Project and marine design management of the proposed dry bulk export ports at Anketell and Oakajee in Western Australia. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (Australia) and member of the WA Division Coastal, Ocean and Ports Engineering Panel.

David has presented several papers relating to past projects at Australian and International Conferences.

Dr Shigeo Takahashi

Dr Takahashi was the president of the Port and Airport Research Institute (PARI) in Japan and is the president of the Coastal Development Institute of Technology (CDIT) in Japan from June 2016. His specialism is wave-structure interaction　including tsunamis and storm surges. He investigated many failures of coastal structures and proposed the improved design of coastal structures including a new estimation method for breaking impact wave forces on vertical breakwaters.

Immediately after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster the institute conducted field surveys of the impacted coastal areas and studies for early recovery. As the president of the institute he directed the studies to rebuild resilient coastal communities.

Miguel Esteban

Miguel Esteban is a professor in the faculty of science and engineering at Waseda University, Tokyo. He received a PhD in coastal engineering from Yokohama National University in 2007 and continued his work in this field with post-doctoral fellowships at Kyoto University and the UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability.

Esteban, who also served as an associate professor at both Waseda and the University of Tokyo, has contributed to more than 150 journal papers on a range of subjects.