Abstract
Coastal flood maps covering the whole European continent have become available in recent years. However, their ability to complement or replace high‐resolution local flood maps was not investigated so far. In this paper we compare pan‐European estimates of extreme sea levels and coastal flood extents at given return periods with observations and high‐resolution reference maps. The analysis is done for two pan‐European assessments and one global study. We find that whereas the models have good accuracy in estimating storm surge heights, large disparities exist between the large‐scale flood maps and four local maps of flood extents from England, the Netherlands, Poland, and France. Moreover, the accuracy of the underlying digital elevation model and assumptions about flood protection existing in a given area influence significantly the results. In addition, the first pan‐European projection of temporal trends in the size of flood zones is presented, with and without assuming flood protection levels.
Highlights
Continental or global assessments of flood hazard have become commonplace in recent years
Large-scale assessments of coastal flood hazard taking into account climate change will be needed, while more effort is needed to assure their informativeness and accuracy
The analysis has shown that hydrodynamic models combined with pan-European or global datasets have good accuracy in estimating extreme water levels, with R2 in the range of 0.9, and NSE around 0.8
Summary
Continental or global assessments of flood hazard have become commonplace in recent years. Many studies on river floods have been conducted even on a global scale, using a large variety of methods, as presented in detail by Bierkens et al (2015). Only a handful large-scale storm surge or coastal flood studies are available (e.g., Forzieri et al, 2016; Hinkel et al, 2014; Mokrech, Kebede, Nicholls, Wimmer, & Feyen, 2015; Vousdoukas, Voukouvalas, Mentaschi, et al, 2016), and none has so far used local flood hazard maps for validation. Large-scale assessments of coastal flood hazard taking into account climate change will be needed, while more effort is needed to assure their informativeness and accuracy
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