Ports are complex engineering systems that have always been evolving to satisfy the new or changing demands of stakeholders. However, the ever-growing complexity in port sectors in a volatile environment creates a high degree of uncertainty in port planning projects. This study presents a structured framework to deal with uncertainties in the port planning process. Stakeholder analysis, different methods of addressing uncertain developments, and SWOT analysis were jointly used to develop the framework. Effective actions were planned in response to opportunities and vulnerabilities derived from uncertainties that manifest in a projected lifetime. Face-to-face interviews with key stakeholders and literature review were conducted to identify uncertainties and planning horizons. The framework was applied to the Ports of Isafjordur Network in Iceland. The results show that demand for aquaculture and cruise activities create the main uncertainties for the port network. Uncertainties mainly present opportunities in the short-term horizon, while in the middle-term horizon the port network is confronted with multiple vulnerabilities. The nonlinearity of dealing with uncertainty by application of the framework provides a robust and better plan toward its success in a dynamic world. The framework supports decision making under uncertainty by facilitating adaptive port planning.

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Capacity plays a crucial role in a port’s competitive position and the growth of its market share. An investment decision to provide new port capacity should be supported by a growing demand for port services. However, port demand is volatile and uncertain in an increasingly competitive market environment. Also, forecasting models themselves are associated with epistemic uncertainty due to model and parameter uncertainties. This paper applies a Bayesian statistical method to forecast the annual throughput of the multipurpose Port of Isafjordur in Iceland. Model uncertainties are thus taken into account, while parameter uncertainties are handled by selecting influencing macroeconomic variables based on mutual information analysis. The presented model has an adaptive capability as new information becomes available. Our method results in a range of port throughput forecasts, in addition to a point estimate, and it also accounts for epistemic uncertainty, thus increasing the reliability of forecasts. Our results provide support for informed decision-making in capacity planning and management. Our forecasts show a constant linear growth of containerized throughput the period 2020–2025. Noncontainerized throughput declines rapidly over the same period.

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Purpose
Port throughput analysis is a challenging task, as it consists of intertwined interactions between a variety of cargos and numerous influencing factors. This study aims to propose a quantitative method to facilitate port throughput analysis by identification of important cargos and key macroeconomic variables.

Design/methodology/approach
Mutual information is applied to measure the linear and nonlinear correlation among variables. The method gives a unique measure of dependence between two variables by quantifying the amount of information held in one variable through another variable.

Findings
This study uses the mutual information to the Port of Isafjordur in Iceland to underpin the port throughput analysis. The results show that marine products are the main export cargo, whereas most imports are fuel oil, industrial materials and marine product. The aggregation of these cargos, handled in the port, meaningfully determines the non-containerized port throughput. The relation between non-containerized export and the national gross domestic product (GDP) is relatively high. However, non-containerized import is mostly related to the world GDP. The non-containerized throughput shows a strong relation to the national GDP. Furthermore, the results reveal that the volume of national export trade is the key influencing macroeconomic variable to the containerized throughput.

Originality/value
Application of the mutual information in port throughput analysis effectively reduces epistemic uncertainty in the identification of important cargos and key influencing macroeconomic variables. Thus, it increases the reliability of the port throughput forecast.@en

The dynamic and ever-increasing complex nature of a port system involves a variety of stakeholders with a broad spectrum of involvement and objectives. In the port master planning, to fulfill the objectives of the various stakeholders and manage conflicts and controversies, a stakeholder analysis is carried out. However, effective and timely engagement of the key stakeholders in the planning process is not an easy task. This paper presents a framework of stakeholder analysis for the case study of the Multi-Purpose Port of Isafjordur in Iceland to underpin the master planning process. The framework deals with a systematic procedure of identification, grouping and then static mapping of stakeholders by means of the power-interest matrix. Further, the fuzzy logic 3-dimensional decision surface was adopted for dynamic salience mapping of the stakeholders. A survey and face-to-face interviews were conducted as tools to collect input for the stakeholder analysis based on the elements of the port master planning. The elements include competitiveness, land use, environmental implication, safety and security, hinterland connection, economic and social impact, financial performance, and flexibility. This paper reveals that dynamic mapping provides a more accurate stakeholder analysis in the field of port master planning than do other methods. The result of the decision surface shows different saliences of key stakeholders, including legislation and public policy, and internal and external stakeholders in the master planning. Thus, in order to have effective and timely stakeholder inclusion throughout the port planning process, a different strategy of engagement with them should be applied.
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Climate change impacts threaten the coastal environment and affect Coastal Ecosystem Services (CES) that are vital to human wellbeing. Quantifying the monetary value of climate change driven environmental losses is scarce, especially in coastal areas of developing countries that have low adaptive capacity to climate change impacts. To address this knowledge gap, we present a practical framework to Quantify Climate change driven Environmental Losses (QuantiCEL) that coherently assesses the likely physical impacts of climate change on CES, and pursues the valuation of their losses with primary data collection. The framework is applied to coastal areas in three developing countries, and may serve as a useful guide for practitioners. We quantify potential environmental losses due to relative sea level rise-induced coastal inundation in Indonesia and Bangladesh, and losses due to sea level rise and storm-induced coastline recession in Sri Lanka in the next 100 years. This study illustrates the applicability of the framework in different contexts in the data-scarce developing countries. Our findings suggest that the three case studies will experience the absolute loss value of CES by the end of the 21 st century, with food provision and tourism suffering the highest losses. Moreover, art, amenity, and tourism services are highly affected CES with respect to the percentage loss relative to the present-day value of these CES. The QuantiCEL framework and its application presented in this study could help researchers, policy makers, and coastal zone managers to get better insights into likely climate change driven environmental losses in coastal areas, contributing to the development of much needed environmental risk quantification methods, and sustainable management of coastal wetlands.@en

Climate change is globally recognized as one of the key drivers of degradation of coastal wetland ecosystems, causing considerable alteration of services provided by these habitats. Quantifying the physical impacts of climate change on these services is therefore of utmost importance. Yet, practical work in this field is fragmented and scarce in current literature, especially in developing countries which are likely to suffer most from the adverse climate change impacts. Using a coherent scenario-based approach that combines assessment of physical impacts with economic valuation techniques, here we quantify potential climate change driven losses in the value of wetland ecosystems services due to relative sea-level rise (RSLR)-induced inundation in the vulnerable Western coastal area of Bangladesh in 2100. The results show a small inundation area in 2100 under the three IPCC climate scenarios of RCP2.6 (with 0.25 m of RSLR), RCP6.0 (with 1.18 m of RSLR), and RCP8.5 (with 1.77 m of RSLR) for the coastal wetland ecosystems including the Sundarbans mangrove forest, neritic system and aquaculture ponds. In all scenarios, RSLR will drive a loss in the total value of ecosystem services such as provision of raw materials, and food provision, ranging from US$ 0–1 million to US$ 16.5–20 million, respectively. The outcomes of this study reveal that RSLR-induced inundation on its own, is unlikely to be a major threat to the wetland ecosystems in Western coast of Bangladesh. This would suggest that other climate change impacts such as coastal erosion, increase in frequency of cyclone events, and sea temperature rise might be the likely primary drivers of change in the value of wetland ecosystems services in this area.@en

Multiple stakeholders with a wide range of objectives are engaged in a port system. Ports themselves are faced with many uncertainties in this volatile world. To meet stakeholder objectives and deal with uncertainties, adaptive port planning is increasingly being acknowledged. This method offers robust planning, and thereby, a sustainable and flexible port may be developed. The planning process starts with defining success in terms of the specific objectives of stakeholders during the projected lifetime of the port. In the present work, an integrated framework to reach a consensus on the definition of success, involving stakeholders with different influences, stakes and objectives, is presented. The framework synthesises the problem structuring method with stakeholder analysis and combines these with fuzzy logic to support decision-makers in formulating a definition of success in the planning process. Our framework is applied to the Port of Isafjordur, the third busiest port of call for cruise ships in Iceland. Values of stakeholders about port planning were structured around the value-focussed thinking method to identify stakeholder objectives. The highest level of agreement on the objectives, which is viewed here as success in port planning, was revealed by the fuzzy multi-attribute group decision-making method. Success was defined, prioritising an increase in competitiveness among other planning objectives, such as effective and efficient use of land, increasing safety and security, increasing hinterland connectivity, increasing financial performance, better environmental implications, flexibility creation and increasing positive economic and social impacts.

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Climate change triggers major alterations to coastal zones worldwide. Quantification of these adverse impacts to coastal ecosystems is often done on a coarse scale of global regions. Consistent local scale estimates of physical impacts on ecosystems and monetary assessment of associated losses are scarce, especially in developing countries. With aim of facilitating such assessment, which is increasingly required, here we propose a coherent three-step framework and subsequently apply it to quantify potential sea level rise-driven alterations in the monetary value of ecosystem services in the coastal area of Semarang in Indonesia. Within this framework, we (1) quantify the present value of coastal ecosystem services by using economic valuation techniques; (2) identify the potential impacts of relative sea level rise (RSLR)-induced inundation on ecosystem services (for the year 2100 inundation scenarios); and (3) monetize these impacts by developing a novel scenario-based approach. The results show that full inundation (scenario A with 4 m RSLR) poses a median loss of 90% (US$ 2.8 – 3.5) and 25% (US$ 90 – 113) to the present art and fishery values per hectare, while amenity service is expected to lose upto 50% (US$ 3700 – 5400) of its present value. Additionally, recreation value of the coastal ecosystems in three selected sites (Marina and Maron beaches, and Plumbon estuary) will decrease by 70% (US$ 15,460 – 19,820) per hectare. However, in scenario B (RSLR of 1.1 m) with a 50% inundated area, these losses are estimated approximately 40% less than for scenario A. It is expected that researchers and policy makers may apply this approach in their areas of interest to gain a better understanding of the likely costs of sea level rise-driven environmental damages along coasts, ultimately contributing to the sustainable management of coastal environment in Indonesia and possibly in other developing countries.@en

In predicting storm impacts on sandy coasts, possibly with structures, accurate runup and overtopping simulation is an important aspect. Recent investigations (Stockdon et al., 2014; Palmsten and Splinter, 2016) show that despite accurate predictions of the morphodynamics of dissipative sandy beaches, the XBeach model (Roelvink et al., 2009) does not correctly simulate the individual contributions of set-up, and infragravity and incident-band swash to the wave run-up. In this paper we describe an improved numerical scheme and a different way of simulating the propagation of directionally-spread short wave groups in XBeach to better predict the groupiness of the short waves and the resulting infragravity waves. The new approach is tested against field measurements from the DELILAH campaign at Duck, NC, and against video-derived runup measurements at Praia de Faro, a relatively steep sandy beach. Compared to the empirical fit by Vousdoukas et al. (2012) the XBeach model performs much better for more extreme wave conditions, which are severely underestimated by existing empirical formulations.For relatively steep beaches incident-band swash cannot be neglected and a wave-resolving simulation mode is required. Therefore in this paper we also test the non-hydrostatic, wave-resolving model within XBeach for runup and overtopping against three datasets. Results for a high-quality flume test show non-hydrostatic XBeach predicts the run-up height with good accuracy (maximum deviation 15%). A case with a very shallow foreshore typical for the Belgian coast at Wenduine was compared against detailed measurements. Overall the model shows correct behavior for this case. Finally, the model is tested against a large number (551) of physical model tests of overtopping from the CLASH database. For relatively high overtopping discharges the non-hydrostatic XBeach performs quite well, with increasing accuracy for increasing overtopping rates. However, for relatively low overtopping rates of less than 10-20 l/m/s, the model systematically underestimates measured overtopping rates.

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The complexity of quantifying ecosystem services in monetary terms has long been a challenging issue for economists and ecologists. Many case specific valuation studies have been carried out in various parts of the World. Yet, a coherent review on the valuation of coastal ecosystem services (CES), which systematically describes fundamental concepts, analyzes reported applications, and addresses the issue of climate change (CC) impacts on the monetary value of CES is still lacking. Here, we take a step towards addressing this knowledge gap by pursuing a coherent review that aims to provide policy makers and researchers in multidisciplinary teams with a summary of the state-of-the-art and a guideline on the process of economic valuation of CES and potential changes in these values due to CC impacts. The article highlights the main concepts of CES valuation studies and offers a systematic analysis of the best practices by analyzing two global scale and 30 selected local and regional case studies, in which different CES have been valued. Our analysis shows that coral reefs and mangroves are among the most frequently valued ecosystems, while sea-grass beds are the least considered ones. Currently, tourism and recreation services as well as storm protection are two of the most considered services representing higher estimated value than other CES. In terms of the valuation techniques used, avoided damage, replacement and substitute cost method as well as stated preference method are among the most commonly used valuation techniques. Following the above analysis, we propose a methodological framework that provides step-wise guidance and better insight into the linkages between climate change impacts and the monetary value of CES. This highlights two main types of CC impacts on CES: one being the climate regulation services of coastal ecosystems, and the other being the monetary value of services, which is subject to substantial uncertainty. Finally, a systematic four-step approach is proposed to effectively monetize potential CC driven variations in the value of CES.@en

In previous studies we have ascertained that inflows and seawater intrusion in the Shatt al-Arab River (SAR) are two key physical factors behind fluctuating and sharply escalating salinities observed in recent years. Such levels require a series of countermeasures and investigative studies to translate physical factors into a salinity dynamics model to understand the problem and its impact as these factors vary in location, time and quantity. A one-dimensional hydrodynamic and salt intrusion numerical model was applied to simulate the complex salinity regime in the SAR based on hourly time-series data for the year 2014. The model was used to analyse the impact of different management scenarios on salinity under different conditions. The results show a high correlation between seawater intrusion and river discharge. Increased use of water upstream and local water withdrawals along the SAR will increase seawater intrusion and salinity concentrations. Improving the quantity and quality of the upstream freshwater sources could reduce salinity levels. Discharging the drainage water into the river could be used to counteract the salt intrusion, considering that its location affects both the salinity distribution and extent. A scenario analysis based on a numerical model constructed for the longitudinal salinity variation associated with different sources in a tidal regime, can efficiently screen alternative water management strategies.

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This is the second of two papers on the 3D numerical modeling of nearshore hydro- and morphodynamics. In Part I, the focus was on surf and swash zone hydrodynamics in the cross-shore and longshore directions. Here, we consider nearshore processes with an emphasis on the effects of oceanic forcing and beach characteristics on sediment transport in the cross- and longshore directions, as well as on foreshore bathymetry changes. The Delft3D and XBeach models were used with four turbulence closures (viz., , , ATM and H-LES) to solve the 3D Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow as well as the beach morphology. The sediment transport module simulates both bed load and suspended load transport of non-cohesive sediments. Twenty sets of numerical experiments combining nine control parameters under a range of bed characteristics and incident wave and tidal conditions were simulated. For each case, the general morphological response in shore-normal and shore-parallel directions was presented. Numerical results showed that the and H-LES closure models yield similar results that are in better agreement with existing morphodynamic observations than the results of the other turbulence models. The simulations showed that wave forcing drives a sediment circulation pattern that results in bar and berm formation. However, together with wave forcing, tides modulate the predicted nearshore sediment dynamics. The combination of tides and wave action has a notable effect on longshore suspended sediment transport fluxes, relative to wave action alone. The model`s ability to predict sediment transport under propagation of obliquely incident wave conditions underscores its potential for understanding the evolution of beach morphology at field scale. For example, the results of the model confirmed that the wave characteristics have a considerable effect on the cumulative erosion/deposition, cross-shore distribution of longshore sediment transport and transport rate across and along the beach face. In addition, for the same type of oceanic forcing, the beach morphology exhibits different erosive characteristics depending on grain size (e.g., foreshore profile evolution is erosive or accretive on fine or coarse sand beaches, respectively). Decreasing wave height increases the proportion of onshore to offshore fluxes, almost reaching a neutral net balance. The sediment movement increases with wave height, which is the dominant factor controlling the beach face shape.@en

This is the second of two papers on the 3D numerical modeling of nearshore hydro- and morphodynamics. In Part I, the focus was on surf and swash zone hydrodynamics in the cross-shore and longshore directions. Here, we consider nearshore processes with an emphasis on the effects of oceanic forcing and beach characteristics on sediment transport in the cross- and longshore directions, as well as on foreshore bathymetry changes. The Delft3D and XBeach models were used with four turbulence closures (viz., , , ATM and H-LES) to solve the 3D Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow as well as the beach morphology. The sediment transport module simulates both bed load and suspended load transport of non-cohesive sediments. Twenty sets of numerical experiments combining nine control parameters under a range of bed characteristics and incident wave and tidal conditions were simulated. For each case, the general morphological response in shore-normal and shore-parallel directions was presented. Numerical results showed that the and H-LES closure models yield similar results that are in better agreement with existing morphodynamic observations than the results of the other turbulence models. The simulations showed that wave forcing drives a sediment circulation pattern that results in bar and berm formation. However, together with wave forcing, tides modulate the predicted nearshore sediment dynamics. The combination of tides and wave action has a notable effect on longshore suspended sediment transport fluxes, relative to wave action alone. The model`s ability to predict sediment transport under propagation of obliquely incident wave conditions underscores its potential for understanding the evolution of beach morphology at field scale. For example, the results of the model confirmed that the wave characteristics have a considerable effect on the cumulative erosion/deposition, cross-shore distribution of longshore sediment transport and transport rate across and along the beach face. In addition, for the same type of oceanic forcing, the beach morphology exhibits different erosive characteristics depending on grain size (e.g., foreshore profile evolution is erosive or accretive on fine or coarse sand beaches, respectively). Decreasing wave height increases the proportion of onshore to offshore fluxes, almost reaching a neutral net balance. The sediment movement increases with wave height, which is the dominant factor controlling the beach face shape.@en

The paper presents the morphodynamic investigation of embayed beaches through the impact of structural headlands. An XBeach model was successfully applied to predict the surf zone current pattern and to predict morphological features of three different embayment scales for low-moderate-high wave energy events. The formation of central rip currents in embayed beaches is linked to the presence of a sand bar, while topographical headland rips developed adjacent to the headland boundary are caused by the geological control of the headland structure itself. The effect of moderate and high waves has resulted to a decreased number of central rips in a longer embayment thus limiting the beach circulation to the cellular type. This type of rips could provide an initial insight into the offshore transport of sand from the coast. Whether wave breaking occurs outside or inside the embayment determines the initiation of large scale rip currents, megarips. Several factors that lead to the generation of megarip currents in literature should be taken into account as a guideline for morphodynamic studies in a high energy embayed coast. Nevertheless, the characteristics of surf zone current circulation in all cases presented in this study complies with the description of the theoretical embayment scaling parameter (δ') (Short and Masselink, 1999 and Castelle and Coco, 2012). Further establishment of this parameter is needed to properly describe the surf zone current circulation in embayed beach systems.@en

The present study is aimed at comparing the numerical and analytical estimation of the shoreline near an idealized groyne structure. Moreover, the impact of sand bypassing on the accretion at the updrift coast calculated by analytical Pelnard solution is compared against the XBeach numerical model. The application of the XBeach model shows some promising results. Prior to bypassing, the resulting shoreline pattern from numerical (XBeach) model resembled the Pelnard model with slight differences. The circulation of wave driven-currents due to diffraction is responsible for the formation of a sand wedge at the downdrift side which cause the coastline to prograde. Despite the fact that the bypassing volume simulated by XBeach is smaller than the analytical solution, the shoreline pattern seems to reasonably follow the Pelnard model. Nevertheless, the use of process based numerical model like XBeach, has been shown to be useful in this type of research. This moreover proves the capability of XBeach model of predicting shoreline evolution and clarifying the mechanism of the natural bypassing process which cannot be achieved by analytical models.

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