Coastal Engineering and Flood Prevention

With increasing global temperatures and climate change, the melting of glacial ice is accelerating sea-level rise. Rising sea levels, coupled with the increasing frequency of climate change-induced weather events, poses an existential threat to Singapore, with flooding of coastal regions being an immediate concern.

It is anticipated that global sea levels will rise by 0.2-0.4 m over the next 50 years, and this is predicted to exacerbate the flooding of coastal areas when a storm surge and high tide occurs simultaneously.

With coastal regions already densely populated, and with business districts and critical national infrastructure at risk, there is an urgent need for Singapore to focus on coastal engineering (protection) and flood prevention.

Our Approach

At NUS, we are committed to strengthening national and regional efforts in coastal adaptation and flood protection. We are developing and integrating state-of-the-art capabilities to track climate change including sea level rise using remote sensing, data analytics, physics-based modelling, and data-assimilation to support scientists and engineers to manage uncertainties and complexities.



We also conduct modelling of coastal flooding in Singapore using physics-based models including atmosphere-ocean coupled model, wind-wave model, coastal inundation-erosion model, and catchment rainfall-runoff hydrology model.

Models and tools will be customized to Singapore’s coastal geology to help in flooding prevention and, also in decision making, especially in adapting internationally recognised best practices in coastal protection techniques.

This accurate modelling system will also be used to evaluate and guide future coastal protection via both engineering and nature-based solutions.