Climate Change and Its Impacts by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319775449
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Community Vulnerability Due to Coastal Flooding

Communities that are not protected by dams and levees include coastal ones that are susceptible to flooding. Climate projections suggest that these communities may be especially vulnerable to hurricanes and other coastal storms, and of course in the case of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) the entire country might be at heightened risk. Current development plans and structural protection strategies have generally been established under the assumption of stationary demand, whereas climate projections suggest possible increases in variability and frequency of such major storms affecting coastal communities. Defenses include structures such as sea walls and storm surge barriers and nature-based protection such as dunes and beach nourishment. Other measures call for decreasing the vulnerability through land use planning, reducing the number of people at risk or designing facilities to be able to withstand flooding. This section follows recommendations of a recent report by the U.S. National Academies, of which the author of this current chapter was a contributing author (National Research Council 2014).

A comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of past coastal protection strategies needs to be performed, and then the sensitivities of these methods to changing sea levels and storm surges consistent with climate change models should be completed. Such an analysis must include the main categories of community protection:

Nature-inspired methods such as beach nourishment and dune-building

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