Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York

Abstract

Sea level rise threatens to increase the impacts of future storms and hurricanes on coastal communities. However, many coastal hazard mitigation plans do not consider sea level rise when assessing storm surge risk. Here we apply a GIS-based approach to quantify potential changes in storm surge risk due to sea level rise on Long Island, New York. We demonstrate a method for combining hazard exposure and community vulnerability to spatially characterize risk for both present and future sea level conditions using commonly available national data sets. Our results show that sea level rise will likely increase risk in many coastal areas and will potentially create risk where it was not before. We find that even modest and probable sea level rise (.5 m by 2080) vastly increases the numbers of people (47% increase) and property loss (73% increase) impacted by storm surge. In addition, the resulting maps of hazard exposure and community vulnerability provide a clear and useful example of the visual representation of the spatial distribution of the components of risk that can be helpful for developing targeted hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation strategies. Our results suggest that coastal agencies tasked with managing storm surge risk must consider the effects of sea level rise if they are to ensure safe and sustainable coastal communities in the future.

Assessing vulnerability: an integrated approach for mapping adaptive capacity, sensitivity, and exposure

“…These types of flooding are environmental hazards of concern that were identified in previous studies and during in-country consultations (OECS 2004;Nurse et al 2014). Following methods from Mucke (2012) and Shepard et al (2012), we combined three sub-indices together to arrive at a final vulnerability index (V):…”

“…We reviewed indicator-based vulnerability studies from the fields of climate adaptation, disaster risk management, and poverty and development to construct the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity sub-indices (e.g., Moss et al 2001;Cutter et al 2003;Granger 2003;O'Brien et al 2004;Deressa et al 2008;Marshall et al 2010;Wongbusarakum and Loper 2011, Holsten and Kropp 2012, Mucke 2012Shepard et al 2012;Eikelboom and Janssen 2013). While these three components are integrative concepts, useful for evaluating the potential effects of climate change, they are also complex concepts representing societal conditions that cannot always be directly measured or observed (Moss et al 2001;Halpern et al 2012).…”

“…Several examples of spatially assessing aspects of vulnerability exist at the local scale (Granger 2003;O'Brien et al 2004;Shepard et al 2012;and others). Although past efforts generally acknowledge exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity as being part of overall vulnerability (Marshall et al 2010;Wongbusarakum andLoper 2011, Mucke 2012), few studies have attempted to spatially model adaptive capacity (Holsten andKropp 2012, Mucke 2012), and even fewer have combined all three aspects into a single spatial representation of vulnerability.…”

“…Drawing from and building upon existing indicator-based vulnerability assessments and mapping approaches from the fields of climate adaptation, disaster management, and poverty and development, we selected indicators that allow practitioners and managers from several fields to explore drivers of vulnerability at the national and sub-regional scale (Cutter et al 2003;Granger 2003;O'Brien et al 2004;Deressa et al 2008;Marshall et al 2010;Wongbusarakum and Loper 2011, Holsten and Kropp 2012, Mucke 2012Shepard et al 2012;Eikelboom and Janssen 2013). Our approach can be used to address national issues on climate change adaptation, hazard management, and poverty and development, and more effectively utilize funds in order to reduce community vulnerability to natural hazards today and in the future.…”

Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge Risk

“…Here, a is small such that slope k (shown here) represents one plus the fractional change in z SLR with respect to (ζ+SLR). From Taylor et al [76] Furthermore, many hazard and risk assessment studies approximate the impact of sea-level rise on future tropical cyclone flooding statistics via direct linear summation of the present-day probabilistic hazard assessment and projected sea-level rise (e.g., [57,72,75,77]), ignoring nonlinear interactions characteristic of complex coastlines and estuarine environments (e.g., [91,93]). This is problematic because this approach potentially creates a bias, on the order of 15 % in the future flood elevation (Fig.…”