Improving Oasis Beach: Creating a sustainable and attractive beach around hotel Oasis in Varadero Cuba

In the North of Cuba, the Oasis beach area is situated. The beach suffers from structural erosion and earlier measures to deal with this have not succeeded. In this project, a solution is offered to reach two goals: foremost, a beach improvement to the Oasis beach sector and second, a halt to the structural erosion in the sector in order to maintain the beach improvement. These goals are strongly linked to one another and contain several research questions to be able to find suitable solutions. A vast analysis on the area has been made. It becomes clear in the project that these impacts are decisive in the erosion that takes place, as natural beach recovery is limitedly possible. An important finding during the analysis is that there is no significant sediment transport in the Oasis beach sector during normal conditions. However, the steep bathymetry and the re-occurrence of cold fronts and hurricanes induce large cross-shore transport and sediment is extracted from the system, leaving the Oasis beach sector with a structural erosion problem. The solution of the problem would have to be a combination of hard and soft measurements. Three alternatives were created, plus a base alternative. The base alternative consists of the demolition of the existing structures and a nourishment. The three alternatives are respectively a ‘Perched beach’, ‘Emerged breakwaters’ and ‘Wooden L-shaped piers’. All alternatives were simulated with the use of Delft3D and XBeach. A Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) was carried out to evaluate the alternatives. The most important criteria in this are the protection against erosion and spatial quality. The MCA, in combination with the estimated accompanying costs, resulted in a final solution proposal, being the perched beach. Although scoring high in general, a few adjustments are made to the design. An addition is made by introducing a sill to the alternative. The sill will take over the function of supporting the beach and enables a smaller beach nourishment and a better controllable beach profile, as it is build closer to shore. Furthermore, the height of the breakwater is increased in order to decrease the amount of necessary maintenance. The proposition of the solution comes with an indication of planning and costs. The construction time is estimated to be 343 days. Construction costs are calculated to be $ 6,970,175.70 CUP, including the costs for the initial nourishment and the demolition of existing structures.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience