Assessing Future Flood Hazards for Adaptation Planning in a Northern European Coastal Community

Abstract

From a transdisciplinary approach in the town of Thyboron, Denmark, we investigate couplings between sea state (i.e., mean and extreme) and flooding hazards today and ahead. This includes analyses of change and variability in the groundwater table, precipitation, land motion, geotechnical ground properties, sewerage systems and other infrastructure to outline a more complete platform for the integration of knowledge into climate adaptation schemes at this highly vulnerable coastal location. It involves the engagement of the main stakeholders who, although having different responsibilities, interests, needs of knowledge and data, and different timeframes for investment and planning, must join in a common appraisal of the challenges faced ahead to provide for better adaptation measures. Apart from obvious adverse effects from future storm surge events, knowledge about the coupled effects of the abovementioned parameters needs to be taken into account to reach optimal mitigation and adaptation measures. Through stakeholder interviews it becomes clear that an enhanced focus on transdisciplinary research is a viable way forward to develop such measures: it will bring in more knowledge, a broader scope, and it will provide for more holistic solutions that both serve to protect the town and allow for business development and better municipal planning ahead.

Handling the health impacts of extreme climate events

“…Furgal & Seguin [15] Vulnerability of indigenous health to climate change: a case study of Uganda's Batwa Pygmies Indigenous people Berrang-Ford et al [3] Climate change and women's health: impacts and policy directions Women's health Sorensen et al [35] Global climate change and children's health Children's health Ahdoot & Pacheco [1] Examining relationship between climate change and mental health in the Circumpolar North Mental health Willox et al [42] Health impacts of climate change and health and social inequalities in the UK Inequality Paavola [31] Leal Filho et al Environmental Sciences Europe (2022) 34:45 dependent of the severity of the flood [4,14]. Landslides can be especially challenging [7].…”

Sea Level Projections From IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere Call for a New Climate Adaptation Strategy in the Skagerrak-Kattegat Seas

“…The coastal climate adaptation plan in Denmark is the responsibility of each municipality. Individual municipalities assess the flood risk in the future according to the vulnerability, RSL and ESL rise along their coastal stretches (Sørensen et al, 2016). RSL rise varies from one coastal stretch to the next, but the variability within one coastal stretch is rather small.…”

“…The coastline extends from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, where the islands constituting the Danish Straits forms part of the reason for the restricted oceanic influence on the Baltic Sea (Figure 1). Denmark has implemented national level requirements for municipalities to develop climate adaptation plans (Sørensen et al, 2016), while such efforts remain voluntary for many other EU countries (Keskitalo et al, 2016). Pioneering projects assessing the users' needs for sea level rise information within the Copernicus Climate Change Service framework, further accentuates that it is of vital importance for coastal planning and adaptation purposes that reliable and robust, upto-date information on SLR, and the impacts of extreme sea level events, are updated regularly (1-5 years, Madsen et al, 2019b;Muis et al, 2020).…”

“…On top, RSL rise adds another dimension of uncertainty, leading to the estimates of recurrence high water level being non-stationary (Masina and Lamberti, 2013;Ghanbari et al, 2019). Despite the uncertainties, estimates of recurrence periods for extreme high waters is of critical interest to risk managers (Woodworth, 2006;Hinkel et al, 2014;Sørensen et al, 2016;Woodworth et al, 2016;Wahl et al, 2017). In this paper we quantify the impact of SLR projections under different scenarios in SROCC on the frequency of extreme high water levels.…”

The Precautionary Principles of the Potential Risks of Compound Events in Danish Municipalities

“…Denmark provides an interesting context to explore how compound events are managed. First, because Denmark is particularly exposed to multiple climate hazard due to its extremely long and complex coastlines (Sørensen et al, 2016). About 80 percent of the population lives in urban areas around the coast, which is particularly exposed to weather and climate related hazards, such as storms and floods (Madsen et al, 2019;Su et al, 2021).…”