Reflections on coastal inundation, climate change impact, and adaptation in built environment: progresses and constraints

Abstract

Coastal inundation causes considerable impacts on communities and economies. Sea level rise due to climate change increases the occurrence of coastal flood events, creating more challenges to coastal societies. Here we intend to draw the understanding of coastal inundation from our early studies, and provide a silhouette of our approaches in assessing climate change impacts as well as developing risk-based climate adaptation. As a result, we impart a distinctive view of the adaption towards the integration of asset design, coastal planning and policy development, which reflect multiscale approaches crossing individual systems to regions and then nation. Having the approaches, we also discussed the constraints that would be faced in adaptation implementation. In this regard, we initially follow the risk approach by illustrating hazards, exposure and vulnerability in relation to coastal inundation, and manifest the impact and risk assessment by considering an urban environment pertinent to built, natural, and socioeconomic systems. We then extend the scope and recommend the general approaches in developing adaptation to coastal inundation under climate change towards ameliorating overall risks, practically, by the reduction in exposure and vulnerability in virtue of the integration of design, planning and polices. In more details, a resilience design is introduced, to effectively enhance the capacity of built assets to resist coastal inundation impact. We then emphasize on the cost-effective adaptation for coastal planning, which delineates the problem of under-adaptation that leaves some potential benefits unrealized or over-adaptation that potentially consumes an excessive amount of resources. Finally, we specifically explore the issues in planning and policies in mitigating climate change risks, and put forward some emerging constraints in adaptation implementation. It suggests further requirements of harmonizing while transforming national policies into the contents aligned with provincial and local governments, communities, and households.