BIOLOGICAL PERFORMANCE OF AN ECO-ENGINEERED ARMORING UNIT, THE COASTALOCK

Increasingly, the permitting and construction of coastal and marine infrastructures (CMI) requires the integration of ecological measures to reduce potential impacts and create opportunities to enhance and restore marine biodiversity. The Nature-Inclusive Design (NID) approach refers to the planning, design, and construction of CMI to create suitable habitat for native species (or communities) whose natural habitat has been degraded or reduced (Hermans et al. 2020). In this context, to facilitate the integration of innovative NID design principles in the marine construction industry, the first fully structural and ecologically engineered armor unit for coastal protection, the COASTALOCKTM (CL), was designed. The CL is an interlocking, multidirectional, single-layer concrete armor unit with ordered regular placement, made with bio- enhancing concrete with proven abilities to enhance local ecosystems and habitat functionality of coastal defense schemes. The CL armor unit was submitted to physical model tests to prove its hydrodynamic stability (Gutiérrez et al, 2023), and its biological performance has been investigated and results are presented hereby.