Repository logo
 

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • RISC-KIT: Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts - toolKIT
    Publication . Van Dongeren, Ap; Ciavola, Paolo; Viavattene, Christophe; de Kleermaeker, Simone; Martinez, Grit; Ferreira, Óscar; Costa, Cristina; McCall, Robert
    Recent and historic high-impact events have demonstrated the flood risks faced by exposed coastal areas. These risks will increase due to climate change and economic development. This requires a re-evaluation of coastal disaster risk reduction DRR strategies and prevention, mitigation and preparedness PMP measures. To this end, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction formulated the Hyogo Framework for Action, and the EU has issued the Floods Directive. By their nature, neither is specific about the methods to be used to assess coastal risks, particularly those risks resulting from dune and structure overtopping, the non-stationarity of surge and flash flood events, and coastal morphodynamic response. This paper describes a set of open-source and open-access methods, tools and management approaches to fill this gap. A Coastal Risk Assessment Framework will assess coastal risk at a regional scale. Thus critical hotspots can be identified for which an impact-oriented Early Warning System/Decision Support System is developed. This can be applied in dual mode: as a forecast and warning system and as an ex-ante planning tool to evaluate the vulnerability. The tools are demonstrated on case study sites on a range of EU coasts with diverse geomorphic settings, land use, forcing, hazard types and socio-economic, cultural and environmental characteristics. Specific DRR plans will be developed for all sites. A management guide of PMP measures and management approaches is to be developed. The toolkit will benefit forecasting and civil protection agencies, coastal managers, local government, community members, NGOs, the general public and scientists.
  • RISC-KIT: Resilience-increasing Strategies for Coasts
    Publication . Van Dongeren, Ap; Ciavola, Paolo; Martinez, Grit; Viavattene, Christophe; DeKleermaeker, Simone; Ferreira, Óscar; Costa, Cristina; McCall, Robert
    High-impact storm events have demonstrated the vulnerability of coastal zones in Europe and beyond. These impacts are likely to increase due to predicted climate change and ongoing coastal development. In order to reduce impacts, disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures need to be taken, which prevent or mitigate the effects of storm events. To drive the DRR agenda, the UNISDR formulated the Sendai Framework for Action, and the EU has issued the Floods Directive. However, neither is specific about the methods to be used to develop actionable DRR measures in the coastal zone. Therefore, there is a need to develop methods, tools and approaches which make it possible to: identify and prioritize the coastal zones which are most at risk through a Coastal Risk Assessment Framework, and to evaluate the effectiveness of DRR options for these coastal areas, using an Early Warning/Decision Support System, which can be used both in the planning and event-phase. This paper gives an overview of the products and results obtained in the FP7-funded project RISC-KIT, which aims to develop and apply a set of tools with which highly-vulnerable coastal areas (so-called "hotspots") can be identified.
  • Introduction to RISC-KIT: resilience-increasing strategies for coasts
    Publication . Van Dongeren, Ap; Ciavola, Paolo; Martinez, Grit; Viavattene, Christophe; Bogaard, Tom; Ferreira, Óscar; Higgins, Ruth; McCall, Robert
    In this paper an introduction is provided to the RISC-KIT project’s goals, products and applications, which is the subject of this Special Issue. Subsequent papers provide the details on the developed tools and their application on ten case study sites in Europe.
  • Prediction of storm impacts on beach and dune systems
    Publication . Ciavola, Paolo; Ferreira, Óscar; Dongeren, Ap Van; Vries, Jaap Van Thiel de; Armaroli, Clara; Harley, Mitchell
    This chapter provides an overview of the current knowledge of storm impacts on low-lying coastlines, including beaches and dunes. It first outlines the complexity of identifying a storm event in an objective manner. The impact of storms on dune ridges is then discussed, making a comparison between research recently carried out in both the USA and Europe. The main impacts of storm events are also reviewed, taking into account the development of overwash processes and breaching of the dune system as well as flooding of the hinterland. The chapter also provides a detailed overview of qualitative and quantitative models of dune erosion by considering the most advanced numerical techniques. It finally discusses the methods for hazard and risk evaluation, taking into account the emerging role that early warning systems are playing in this field.
  • Storm impacts along European coastlines. Part 2: lessons learned from the MICORE project
    Publication . Ciavola, Paolo; Ferreira, Óscar; Haerens, Piet; Van Koningsveld, Mark; Armaroli, Clara
    This paper describes the MICORE approach to quantify for nine field sites the crucial storm related physical hazards (hydrodynamic as well as morphodynamic) in support of early warning efforts and emergency response. As a first step historical storms that had a significant morphological impact on a representative number of sensitive European coastal stretches were reviewed and analysed in order to understand storm related morphological changes and how often they occur around Europe. Next, an on-line storm prediction system was set up to enable prediction of storm related hydro- and morphodynamic impacts. The system makes use of existing offthe- shelf models as well as a new open-source morphological model. To validate the models at least one year of fieldwork was done at nine pilot sites. The data was safeguarded and stored for future use in an open database that conforms to the OpenEarth protocols. To translate quantitative model results to useful information for Civil Protection agencies the Frame of Reference approach (Van Koningsveld et al., 2005, 2007) was used to derive Storm Impact Indicators (SIIs) for relevant decision makers. The acquired knowledge is expected to be directly transferred to the civil society trough partnerships with end-users at the end of the MICORE project.
  • Storm impacts along European coastlines. Part 1: The joint effort of the MICORE and ConHaz Projects
    Publication . Ciavola, Paolo; Ferreira, Óscar; Haerens, Piet; Van Koningsveld, Mark; Armaroli, Clara; Lequeux, Quentin
    The current paper discusses the topic of marine storm impact along European coastlines, presenting results from two FP7 Projects currently focusing on this topic, one working on the physical aspects of the problem (MICORE) and the other one on the socio-economic implications (ConHaz). The MICORE Project aims to provide on-line predictions of storm-related physical hazards (hydrodynamic as well as morphodynamic). The ConHaz Project addresses the socio-economic implications should these (or other) hazards actually materialize. Together these projects aim to deliver crucial information for emergency response efforts, while realizing the practical limitations for information processing and dissemination during crisis situations. The MICORE Project has developed and demonstrated on-line tools for reliable predictions of the morphological impact of marine storm events in support of civil protection mitigation strategies. The project specifically targeted the development of early warning and information systems to support short term emergency response in case of an extreme storm event. The current paper discusses in detail the outcome of an activity of databasing historical storm data. No clear changes in storminess were observed, except for some storm proxies (e.g. surges) and only at some locations (e.g. northern Adriatic, southern Baltic, etc.). The ConHaz Project undertook a desktop study of the methods normally used for evaluating the impact of marine storms and the associated coastal hazards considering direct costs, costs due to disruption of production processes, indirect costs, intangible costs, and costs of adaptation and mitigation measures. Several methods for cost estimation were reviewed. From the review it emerged that normally end-users only evaluate direct costs after the storms, while the cost of adaptation and mitigation measures is only done strategically in the context of Integrated Coastal Zone Management plans. As there is no standardized method for cost evaluations in this field, it is suggested that clear guidelines should be produced on the basis of simplicity for use by end-users. The integration between historical databases of the physical parameters of storms and detailed cost evaluation information would support the development of a knowledge background in end-users and justify the development of adaptation strategies.