Exploring Mega-Nourishment Interventions Using Long Short-Term Memory
(LSTM) Models and the Sand Engine Surface MATLAB Framework
Abstract
Coastal protection is of paramount importance because erosion and
flooding affect millions of people living along the coast and can
largely influence countries’ economy. The implementation of nature-based
solutions for coastal protection, such as sand engines, has become more
popular due to these interventions’ adaptability to climate change. This
study explores synergies between AI and hydro-morphodynamic models for
the creation of efficient decision-making tools for the choice of
optimal sand engines configurations. Specifically, we investigate the
use of long-short-term memory (LSTM) models as predictive tools for the
morphological evolution of sand engines. We developed different LSTM
models to predict time series of bathymetric changes across the sand
engine as well as the time-decline in the sand engine volume as a
function of external forces and intervention size. Finally, a MATLAB
framework was developed to return LSTM model results based on users’
inputs about sand engine size and external forcings.