Abstract
Small island states around the world are among the areas most vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise. In this paper, we present results from an innovative methodology for a quantitative assessment of multiple hazards on coastal risks, driven by different hydro-meteorological events, and including the effects of climate change. Moreover, we take an additional step by including in the methodology the option to assess and compare the effectiveness of possible disaster risk reduction measures. The methodology is applied to a real case study at the island of Ebeye (the Republic of the Marshall Islands). An example is provided in which a rock revetment is implemented as a risk reduction measure for the island. Results show that yearly expected damages may increase, by the end of the century, by a factor of three to four, depending on the sea level rise scenario considered, while the number of yearly affected people may double. Putting a cap on the temperature increase (e.g. 1.5 vs. 2 °C) according to the Paris Agreement may reduce damages and number of affected people by about 20 and 15%, respectively. However, impacts for same warming levels can vary substantially among different emission scenarios. Disaster risk reduction measures can be useful for mitigating risks in current and future situations but should be incorporated within long-term adaptive planning for these islands.
Highlights
In most islands around the world, people, agriculture, infrastructure and recreational activities are concentrated in the coastal zones and are especially vulnerable to any changeElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Unit, Delft, Netherlands in climate and rise in sea level
The total baseline expected annual damages (EAD) over the island is estimated at about $2.4 million, of which about $2.1 million results from flooding and $0.3 million from erosion. Those values were validated against yearly damages provided by the local government and were within the same order of magnitude
A methodology is proposed to assess, in a quantitative way, coastal risks due to multiple hazards driven by various hydro-meteorological events, accounting for the effects of climate change
Summary
As one of the main outcomes of their review, the authors pointed out how multi-risk approaches often do not consider the effects of climate change and mostly rely on the analysis of static vulnerability. In contrast to single-hazard analyses, the assessment of multiple hazards poses a number of additional challenges related to the interaction and combination between those hazards at different spatial and temporal scales (see for example, Kappes et al 2012). For this reason, the impact of different combined hazards is often resolved by describing the hazards by empirical formulas These include the use of Bayesian Network analysis to describe the interaction of multiple hazards with the socio-economic system (Poelhekke et al 2016; Plomaritis et al 2017)
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