Geo-Tubes as Sea Walls to check Coastal Erosion in Andhra Pradesh

Water, the life force, can also be life-threatening during natural disasters like floods. While on the one hand, it is a blessing for humanity, floods and coastal erosion are often manmade, linked with aggressive urbanization and improper use of natural resources. Today, we explore the role of geosynthetics in the form of geo tubes as sea walls to check coastal erosion in Andhra Pradesh.

Ocean Geosynthetics, the leading geo tube manufacturer, provides sustainable and innovative solutions to check coastal erosion.

Andhra Pradesh has the second-longest coastline in India at around 974 km. The nine districts of Nellore, Prakasam, Guntur, Krishna, West Godavari, East Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, and Srikakulam are all along the coastline, with Srikakulam having the longest shoreline.

The 2015 GIS analysis reveals 275 km of the shoreline faced coastal erosion, with only 153 km stable. The village of Uppada (East Godavari district) in the Kakinada division of Andhra Pradesh is one of the many villages facing nature’s fury, with the tidal waves wreaking havoc. On average, the coastline of Uppada has seen erosion at 1.23m/year between 1989 and 2018.

Geo Tubes as Sea Walls:

Way back in 2010, deployment of geosynthetics in the form of Geo tubes along 1463 m of the Uppada seashore helped the residents of this village.  Geo tubes form an integral part of the rivers and flood protection and coastal shoreline protection sectors.

The geo tubes or geotextile tubes are humongous tube-like structures fabricated from robust and high strength geotextiles filled with soil. Local soil/sand is pumped in situ through portals in the prefabricated geotextile tubes. This forms an enormous monolithic and continuous structure serving as a seawall resistant to water currents.

As a seawall, the geo tubes made of natural polymer are filled with sediment and placed parallel to the coastline reducing the impact of the oncoming waves during high tides and alleviating the erosion to a great extent.

The erection of the seawall with the installation of geo tubes in the Kakinada-Uppada stretch showed initial positive coastal phenomena with a considerable reduction in erosion rate, up until the cyclones Vardah in 2016 and Fani in 2019.

The robust seawall built with robust geo tubes lasted for more than a decade without maintenance. It served the purpose of shoreline protection even in an unstable and dynamic coastline, with constantly changing wave patterns and variations in sediment transport.

Most recently, the Department of Transport, Roads, and Building has proposed to the state government to re-erect the 1463 meter long seawall with five layers of geosynthetics after a complete study of the Uppada beach profile complete with the dynamic nature and strength of tidal waves. The plan now is to erect a protection sea wall that is 6 meters high with five layers, including geotextiles, geo tubes, sand, a stone belt, and a concrete layer.

Ocean Geosynthetics, an environmentally-conscious company, manufactures premium quality geo tubes that are versatile and flexible, can be stacked in any configuration. They may either serve to reinforce or replace existing seawalls, playing a vital role in coastal conservation. Explore our shoreline protection geosynthetic products and find one that best suits your project.