Coastal problems associated with Southern Colombo Harbour expansion project

Abstract

Colombo is the major commercial harbour in Sri Lanka and the government has started to expand this harbour to increase its capacity. Therefore, a breakwater has started to build perpendicular to the shoreline. Due to these types of offshore structures wave patterns as well as current patterns changes to a large extent, leading to detrimental effects on the coastal beaches on either side of the harbour. In this study, we are planning to understand coastal effects due to the harbour expansion by studying 8 transects selected from each side of the harbour and measuring beach width, profile changes and grain size variation at mean sea level at monthly interval. This information along with previous shoreline data collected from the Survey department of Sri Lanka can be used to understand the coastal sediment dynamics including the erosion and deposition characters in the nearby beaches.