Seawalls and revetments in coastal engineering practice

Seawalls and revetments ('hard' structures built parallel to the coastline) may serve a perfect goal in coastal engineering practice, if they are properly applied. If they are, however, meant to resolve a wrong class of coastal engineering problems, their application will result in a dramatic enterprise. From an analysis of some relevant coastal processes and coastal engineering notions, different classes of problems are to be discerned, From this analysis it follows when seawalls and revetments might be used, and when their application must be strongly dissuaded.