Collaborative Science to Enhance Coastal Resilience and Adaptation

Abstract

Impacts from natural and anthropogenic coastal hazards are substantial and increasing significantly with climate change. Coasts and coastal communities are increasingly at risk. In addition to short-term events, long-term changes, including rising sea levels, increasing storm intensity, and consequent severe compound flooding events are degrading coastal ecosystems and threatening coastal dwellers. Consequently, people living near the coast require environmental intelligence in the form of reliable shortterm and long-term predictions in order to anticipate, prepare for, adapt to, resist, and recover from hazards. Risk-informed decision making is crucial, but for the resulting information to be actionable, it must be effectively and promptly communicated to planners, decision makers and emergency managers in readily understood terms and formats. The information, critical to forecasts of extreme weather and flooding, as well as long-term projections of future risks, must involve synergistic interplay between observations and models. In addition to serving data for assimilation into models, the observations are also essential for objective validation of models via hind casts. Linked observing and modeling programs that involve stakeholder input and integrate engineering, environmental, and community vulnerability are needed to evaluate conditions prior to and following severe storm events, to update baselines, and to plan for future changes over the long term. In contrast to most deep-sea phenomena, coastal vulnerabilities are locally and regionally specific and prioritization of the most important observational data and model predictions must rely heavily on input from local and regional communities and decision makers. Innovative technologies and nature-based solutions are already helping to reduce vulnerability from coastal hazards in some localities but more focus on local circumstances, as opposed to global solutions, is needed. Agile and spatially distributed response capabilities will assist operational organizations in predicting, preparing for and mitigating potential community-wide disasters. This white paper outlines the rationale, synthesizes recent literature and summarizes some data-driven approaches to coastal resilience.

Understanding the dynamic nature of risk in climate change assessments—A new starting point for discussion

“…In terms of frameworks, we need to ensure that there are mechanisms and procedures to incorporate local knowledge to assist with risk assessments. For example, whilst many coastlines may share similar physical exposure from rise in sea levels and storm surge, different coastal communities have locally and regionally specific vulnerabilities, which requires substantial input from local community and decision makers to ensure that meaningful information is fed into observational and modelling programs used to address short‐ and long‐term risks (Nichols et al, ).…”

Une méthode de suivi de la vulnérabilité systémique à l’érosion et la submersion marines

“…Parmi ce foisonnement d'usages de la notion de vulnérabilité, nous proposons une approche de ce que nous appelons la « vulnérabilité systémique » aux risques côtiers de submersion-érosion (Meur-Ferec et al , 2003, 2008Hénaff et Philippe (dir. ), 2014 ;Nichols et al 2019). Notre approche se nourrit bien sûr des travaux précédents, en particulier de ceux de D'Ercole (1994), qui définit la vulnérabilité des sociétés à travers leur capacité de réponse à des crises potentielles, capacité qui dépend de facteurs conjoncturels (l'aléa) et structurels (contexte social, économique, culturel, fonctionnel, institutionnel).…”

Research Priorities for Coastal Geoscience and Engineering: A Collaborative Exercise in Priority Setting From Australia

“…The scale and frequency of these impacts, enhanced by a changing climate, requires a coordinated effort to prioritise, plan, and implement adaptation measures. Horizon scanning and collaborative priority setting exercises have been widely used to identify emerging issues and priorities in science, and to determine their relative importance from a researcher and practitioner perspective (e.g., Sutherland et al, 2011;Rudd and Lawton, 2013;Rudd, 2014;Nichols et al, 2019;Wisz et al, 2020). Within the discipline areas of marine and coastal science, several studies have been undertaken that have identified priority research questions and topics.…”