Abstract: The seawall is an important engineering measure to prevent storm surge and reduce marine disasters. Under the dual impact of sea level rise and storm surge intensification, the storm surge defense capability of the seawall in the Greater Bay Area has been reduced passively, and the storm surge defense safety has been challenged. Through field investigation, the typical failure forms of seawall in the Greater Bay Area were sorted out, including overturning of the breakwater wall, destruction of the upstream slope and collapse of the back slope, among which the failure of the back slope accounted for nearly half of the cases. In order to cope with the extreme storm surge disaster, it is urgent to upgrade and reinforce the Greater Bay Area seawall. However, the traditional way of improving seawall standard, which mainly focuses on raising the embankment top height, is in prominent contradiction with the needs of the urban waterfront landscape. Based on this, it is proposed that the seawall construction in the Greater Bay Area should be transformed from a vertical integration to a horizontal separation from wave and tide, that is, the dike should be used to "block high tide" and the measures in front of the levee and the levee should be used to "dissipate large waves". Compared with the traditional method of raising standards, it achieves the goal of improving the storm surge defense capability without raising the top elevation of the dike. The results can provide reference for the construction of seawall in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.