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Professor William Allsop BSc (Hons) Civil Engineering, Ordinary and Higher National Certificates in Civil Engineering

Visiting Professor

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Professor William Allsop is Visiting Professor within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.

Nigel William Henry ALLSOP is Technical Director for Maritime Structures at HR Wallingford, responsible for research and consultancy studies, technology development and transfer covering testing, analysis, design and optimisation of breakwaters, sea walls, revetments, jetties / piers and wide range of reservoir, shoreline, estuarial and coastal structures. He has more than 38 years' experience of testing and analysis of breakwaters (rubble mound, vertical and composite), sea walls, revetments, piers / jetties and coastal / shoreline structures, He also has experience of engineering works or renewable energy systems in tidal estuaries, and rivers, in sand and cohesive sediment transport, in the performance of river structures, outfalls and oil booms, and on the performance and certification of temporary flood protection devices. He devised the UK’s first Tsunami Generator.

William Allsop has been responsible for research to advance design methods for breakwaters and coastal structures in collaboration with other UK and European researchers. He has cooperated on research projects in UK, Europe and USA, particularly in VOWS, Big-VOWS, PROVERBS, CLASH and Floodsite. He has served on ICE Maritime Board, PIANC working groups, and on the Research Advisory Group for the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). He has contributed to PIANC, BSI, ISO and ICE working groups, and drafting revisions to the British Standard Marine Code.

As Visiting Professor at Southampton (previously at Sheffield, Belfast, and UTM), William Allsop has taught more than 120 courses / workshops / seminars since 1994, and regularly teaches Design of Coastal Structures at Southampton and Belfast, and on a number of short courses each year.

Research interests

Research and consultancy studies covering testing, analysis, design and optimisation of breakwaters, sea walls, revetments, jetties / piers and wide range of reservoir, shoreline, estuarial and coastal structures. Rivers, sand and cohesive sediment transport, performance of outfalls, oil booms, and on certification of temporary flood protection devices. Training courses at Belfast, Southampton, other universities, HR Wallingford, and elsewhere

PhD supervision

Supervised 12 PhD theses, 14 Masters theses and examined 2 PhD’s since 1991

Research projects

Flooding analysis for a nuclear power station (2012-2013)
Professor Allsop was Project Director in a review of sea flooding assessments for a UK coastal power station requiring analysis of extremes, wave overtopping and potential beach re-shaping. This review successfully identified weaknesses in previous predictions, and derived a way forward.

Breakwater testing for a new Malaysian harbour (2012-2013)
William Allsop was Project Director for 2D and 3D physical model studies to test / prove the design of a long rubble mound breakwater protecting a new harbour on an exposed coast. The initial design required a number of iterations to give acceptable stability and performance.

Modification to the Port of Rotterdam (2012)
William Allsop supervised an extended series of studies in a large wave flume to model wave reflection performance of a number of alternative structure configurations to improve reclamation land-use whilst not increasing wave reflections from the harbour margin.

Forensic analysis of reclamation seawall failures (2012)
At sites in UK and the Gulf, reclamation seawalls had suffered damage. Professor Allsop reviewed information available, analysed causes of failures, and devised potential methods of curing / ameliorating the resulting problems.

Studies of need for geotextile filter in retaining sand fill (2011 - 2012)
For a series of sand-fill islands in the Arabian Gulf, William Allsop devised a test methodology and analysis approach to test whether a geotextile filter is needed at different levels between sand fill and a rubble retaining bund , building on his previous suffusion research.

Research group

Coastal Engineering and Management

Professor William Allsop
HR Wallingford Wallingford Oxfordshire UK

Room Number : 37/3049


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