Since its inception in 2010, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineering With Nature® (EWN) initiative has made significant progress in developing and applying practical methods that demonstrate the benefits of an ecosystem approach to infrastructure development and operations.

As a result, EWN features are increasingly being considered as an important component of coastal flood protection and dredged material management strategies. As the incorporation of Natural and Nature-Based Features in USACE projects has become more frequent, the need to accurately and efficiently model and test project designs has also increased. However, hydrodynamic numerical modeling of these features can be a time-consuming process, with limited guidance available on how to execute this workflow.

To solve this challenge, researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center have developed the EWN Modeling Toolkit, a series of tools that enable more timely and accurate modeling of EWN features.