Abstract
Fast urbanization produces a large and growing population in coastal areas. However, the increasing rise in sea levels, one of the most impacts of global warming, makes coastal communities much more vulnerable to flooding than before. While most existing work focuses on understanding the large-scale impacts of sea-level rise, this paper investigates parcel-level property impacts, using a specific coastal city, Tampa, Florida, USA, as an empirical study. This research adopts a spatial-temporal analysis method to identify locations of flooded properties and their costs over a future period. A corrected sea-level rise model based on satellite altimeter data is first used to predict future global mean sea levels. Based on high-resolution LiDAR digital elevation data and property maps, properties to be flooded are identified to evaluate property damage cost. This empirical analysis provides deep understanding of potential flooding risks for individual properties with detailed spatial information, including residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture, and governmental buildings, at a fine spatial scale under three different levels of global warming. The flooded property maps not only help residents to choose location of their properties, but also enable local governments to prevent potential sea-level rising risks for better urban planning. Both spatial and temporal analyses can be easily applied by researchers or governments to other coastal cities for sea-level rise- and climate change-related urban planning and management.
Highlights
The terms “global warming” and “climate change” refer to shifting weather patterns due to increasing average global temperatures leading to long-term impacts on the Earth surfaces from land to ocean and ice sheets as well as the atmosphere itself
This study proposed three types of sea-level rise scenarios according to the climate change, using the high-resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data and the recently released high-precision sea level acceleration data, and assessed the total land area and the cost of properties to be flooded due to the sea level rise in the city of Tampa, FL, USA
Coupled with parcel-level property value data, we further identified all properties with different types of use, which might be flooded due to the estimated sea level rise under three types of sea-level rise and climate change scenarios
Summary
The terms “global warming” and “climate change” refer to shifting weather patterns due to increasing average global temperatures leading to long-term impacts on the Earth surfaces from land to ocean and ice sheets as well as the atmosphere itself. Glaciers around the world are dwindling and even disappearing due to increasing drastic changes in Earth’s climate [1]. Sea-level rise is only one of the consequences of these changes because glaciers store a lot of water on land, but melting glaciers increase water runoff into the ocean, making global sea levels rise. Even a small increase in sea levels can have catastrophic effects on coastal habitats. Without taking any actions soon, the adaptation to these impacts caused by sea-level rises in the future will become more difficult and more expensive
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