Pitfalls in developing coastal climate adaptation responses

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIncreasing awareness of the risks to coastal communities and infrastructure posed by sea level rise and possible climate-induced changes to the frequency and intensity of catchment flooding events have triggered a large number of studies that have assessed the risk, and developed a prioritisation of actions. These prioritised action recommendations are typically encapsulated in climate adaptation plans and pathways documents, risk reduction strategies, and climate action plans. These studies typically involve a vulnerability assessment task and an action prioritisation task, often performed in the same study. Most of the focus on research and method development over recent decades has been on the first task that aims to quantify the vulnerability of coastal communities and infrastructure. It is argued here that as a result of this emphasis on assessing vulnerability, at the cost of adequate consideration of response actions, along with the linear 'fix and forget' management approach to climate adaptation, has led to a lack of uptake in coastal climate adaptation studies and strategies. To this end the aim of the work presented here is to highlight common shortfalls in this fix and forget approach and in particular in the response prioritisation task. Ways that these shortfalls can be avoided, based on knowledge from decision theory, are presented. IntroductionOver the last two decades an increasing number of climate change risk and adaptation studies have investigated potential climate change-induced impacts to coastal settlements and infrastructure. This is presumably in response to the increasing global awareness of the potential impacts of climate change delivered either through acute and sporadic natural hazards (i.e. floods, wildfires), creeping or slow-moving changes to environmental conditions (i.e. extended droughts), or interactions between both (IPCC, 2013). In such interaction cases synoptic extreme events are exacerbated by slow moving changes to underlying conditions (for example increased rainfall intensity and coastal flooding during storms potentially exacerbated by a globally warmer atmosphere).Many of these studies have considered potential impacts to coastal areas where creeping sea level rise is expected to increase the risk profile for a number of coastal settlements (e.g. Appelquista and Balstrømb, 2014). These studies are being delivered by a variety of providers ranging from the academic and research community, to general and specialised environmental and engineering consultants. Furthermore, like any new discipline or service offering, a range of methodological approaches have been developed and applied. However to date there has been little comparison or consensus of approaches http://dx.

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