Egmond aan Zee

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Egmond aan Zee is located in the province of Northern Holland. On a large scale the coast can be assumed alongshore uniform. On a smaller scale, however, it is characterised by alongshore irregularities. The beach is fronted by three bars, two in the surf zone and one swash bar. The trough between the swash and the inner bar is about 2 m deep. The inner bar is followed by a trough of up to 5 m depth. The outer bar is located 300 m offshore of the inner bar with a crest level of about 3 m below NAP (van Duin et al., 2004). The outer bar is only broken by widely spaced rips while the inner bar is highly rhythmic (Short, 1992).

The study site is situated in a meso-tidal environment (van Rijn, 1998) with a tidal range in the order of 2 m. The wave climate is wind-sea dominated with a modal wave of 1 m height and 5 s period. During summer the waves are generally low and do not vary considerably. Autumn is a transition period when wave height and variance increase. The winter period is characterised by higher storm intensities with larger waves.

Egmond aan Zee is among the so-called erosion hot spots along the Dutch coast. This means that the shore line cannot be maintained at its position of 1990 without regular sand nourishments. Therefore, the Dutch policy is to nourish the beaches that are threatened by structural erosion on a regular basis. The last maintenance work in Egmond aan Zee was performed as a beach and shoreface nourishment in March 2011.