Coast. Eng. J. 2015.57. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA @ SAN DIEGO on 06/03/15. For personal use only. H. Oumeraci et al.A brief overview of the joint research project XtremRisK is given. The project has been focusing on developing/improving/expanding the knowledge, methods and models with respect to (i) physically possible extreme storm surge for current conditions and scenarios for climate change, (ii) failure mechanisms of flood defenses, (iii) assessment of intangible losses (social and ecological) and their integration with direct/indirect economic losses, (iv) reliability analysis of flood defense systems and (v) sourcepathway-receptor (SPR)-based integrated flood risk analysis involving both tangible and intangible losses and its implementation for two selected pilot sites (representative for an open coast and an urban estuarine area in Germany). The key results are briefly summarized and the lessons learned for future flood risk studies are finally drawn.

Coastal flooding is one of the devastating natural disasters occurred in the recent past and it is expected to further increase due to the effects of sea level rise and storm surges associated with climate change. Losses from these floods are generally categorized as tangible and intangible depending on whether or not the losses can be easily assessed in monetary values. Compared to tangible losses, relatively few research studies exist where intangible losses are assessed and incorporated into flood risk analysis due to the lack of appropriate evaluation and integration methodologies. In this research study, all the intangible losses are assessed in nonmonetary measures using different approaches which were either adopted from literature or newly developed. Furthermore, an attempt was taken to assess the intangible losses in monetary values. The integration of tangible economic losses with the intangible losses measured in nonmonetary values was carried out within the framework of a multi-criteria analysis (MCA). Moreover, the intangible losses in monetary measures are integrated adopting the concept of cost-benefit analysis. The paper presents the results of the evaluation of intangible losses and their integration with tangible economic losses for the exemplary study carried out in the two XtremRisK pilot sites, Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, and Sylt Island in Germany.

No abstract

Extreme storm surges have frequently led to major damages also along the German coastline. The joint research project 'XtremRisK' was initiated to improve the understanding of risk-related issues due to extreme storm surges and to quantify the flood risk for two pilot sites at the open coast and in an estuarine area under present and future climate scenarios. In this context, an integrated flood risk analysis is performed based on the source-pathway-receptor concept under consideration of possible tangible and intangible losses. This paper describes the structure of the project, the methodology of the subprojects, and first results. Moreover, integration approaches are discussed. The results of 'XtremRisK' will be used to propose flood risk mitigation measures for the prospective end-users.

No abstract