The risks to human populations in coastal areas are changing due to climate and socio-economic changes, and these trends are predicted to accelerate during the 21 st Century. To understand these changing risks, and the resulting choices and pathways to successful management and adaptation, broad-scale integrated assessment is essential. Due to their complexity these two risks are usually managed independently, yet frequently they are interconnected by longshore exchange of sediments and the resulting broad scale morphological system behaviour. Simply put, if beach levels rise or fall, flood risk in adjacent low-lying coastal areas decreases or increases respectively. In order to generate new insights into the effects of climate change and coastal management practises on coastal erosion and flood risk, we present an integrated assessment of 72 km of shoreline over the 21 st Century on the East Anglian Coast of England. A coupled system of hydrodynamic, morphological, reliability and socio-economic models has been developed for the analysis, which has been implemented under scenarios of climate and socio-economic change. The study is unique in coastal management terms because of the large spatial scale and extended temporal scales over which the analysis is quantified, but is also a site of significant controversy about how to manage coastal flood and erosion risks over the 21 st Century. This study for the first time quantifies what has for some years been argued qualitatively: the role of sediments released from cliff erosion in protecting neighbouring low-lying land from flooding. The losses and benefits are expressed using the common currency of economic risk. The analysis demonstrates that over the 21 st Century, flood risk in the study area is expected to be an order of magnitude greater than erosion risk. Both climate and socio-economic change can have a significant influence on flood risk. This study demonstrates that the choices concerning coastal management are profound, and there are clear tradeoffs between erosion and flood impacts.
This paper provides an overview of the development of the 'Regional Impact Simulator' -a user friendly software tool designed to allow stakeholders to perform integrated assessments of the effects of climate and/or socio-economic change on the important sectors and resources of two contrasting UK regions. This
Interactive tools developed within the RegIS project for assessing the impacts of flooding provide information to support flood management policies and analyse the performance of possible adaptation activities to climate change. This paper describes the methodologies used in the development of these tools including tidal and fluvial flooding processes with different levels of climate pressures, represented by changes in sea level and peak river flows. Potential impacts of climate change for East Anglia and North West England are explored to the 2050s using four socio-economic scenarios to represent plausible futures. This includes changes in urban land use as well as adaptive responses to flooding comprising dike upgrade and realignment options. The results indicate that future climate will increase flood risk in both regions. East Anglia is more vulnerable to climate change than North West England at the present level of protection, especially in the extensive coastal lowlands of the Fens and Broads because of the combined effects of sea-level rise and increased fluvial flows. Although the present adaptive policy of upgrading defences in East Anglia will reduce the impacts of flooding, this policy is not effective in the case of the more extreme climate change scenarios by 2050s. In this case, more extensive adaptation would be required.M. Mokrech (B) · R. J. Nicholls School of Civil Engineering and the Environment,
The Coastal Fluvial Flood (CFFlood) model for assessing coastal and fluvial flood impacts under current and future climate and socio-economic conditions is presented and applied at the European scale. Flood frequency is estimated as a function of river flows, extreme sea levels and estimated defence standards to determine the flood extent and depth. Flood consequences are estimated by combining the latter with information on urban areas, population density and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Climate and socioeconomic scenarios and possible adaptation choices are included to analyse future conditions. In 2010, almost 6% of the European population is estimated to live in the 100 year flood area. The corresponding economic loss is €236 billion, assuming no defences. Estimated flood protection reduces economic damage substantially by 67% to 99% and the number of people flooded is reduced by 37% to 99% for the 100 year event. Impact simulations show that future climate and socio-economic conditions may increase flood impacts, especially in coastal areas due to sea-level rise. In contrast, impacts caused by fluvial flooding sometimes decrease, especially in southern and western regions of Europe due to decreases in precipitation and consequent run-off. Under high-end scenarios, flood impacts increase substantially unless there are corresponding adaptation efforts.
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