Many low-lying coastal urban areas in north-western Europe rely on a hybrid beach-dike coastal defense system against flooding, which consists of a low-crested impermeable sea dike and a long (nourished) beach in front that functions as a very/extremely shallow foreshore during storm conditions. Along the cross-section of this hybrid coastal defense system, storm waves are forced to undergo many transformation processes before they finally overtop the dike. Field measurements of all these processes at the same time are very challenging but necessary (i.e., no scale nor model effects), and crucial to evaluate design methodologies. This paper presents the field setup and the design features of an innovative research dike at Raversijde (RDR), unique in the world, which measures wave transformations, wave overtopping and impact; including a performance analysis of the RDR based on the first measured storms during winters '22-'23 and '23-'24.
