Document Details

Projected 21st Century Coastal Flooding in the Southern California Bight. Part 2: Tools for Assessing Climate Change-Driven Coastal Hazards and Socio-Economic Impacts

Nathan Wood, Sean Vitousek, Andrea C. O'Neill, Jessica Lovering, Patrick Limber, Jeanne M. Jones, Maya Hayden, Juliette Finzi Hart, Amy C. Foxgrover, Michael Fitzgibbon, Li H. Erikson, Patrick Barnard | July 2nd, 2018


This paper is the second of two that describes the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) approach for quantifying physical hazards and socio-economic hazard exposure in coastal zones affected by sea-level rise and changing coastal storms. The modelling approach, presented in Part 1, downscales atmospheric global-scale projections to local scale coastal flood impacts by deterministically computing the combined hazards of sea-level rise, waves, storm surges, astronomic tides, fluvial discharges, and changes in shoreline positions. The method is demonstrated through an application to Southern California, United States, where the shoreline is a mix of bluffs, beaches, highly managed coastal communities, and infrastructure of high economic value.

Results show that inclusion of 100-year projected coastal storms will increase flooding by 9–350% (an additional average 53.0 16.0 km2) in addition to a 25–500 cm sea-level rise. The greater flooding extents translate to a 55–110% increase in residential impact and a 40–90% increase in building replacement costs. To communicate hazards and ranges in socio-economic exposures to these hazards, a set of tools were collaboratively designed and tested with stakeholders and policy-makers; these tools consist of two web-based mapping and analytic applications as well as virtual reality visualizations. To reach a larger audience and enhance usability of the data, outreach and engagement included workshop-style trainings for targeted end-users and innovative applications of the virtual reality visualizations.

Keywords

climate change, economic analysis, flood management, modeling, outreach and engagement, planning and management