A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

Balica, S.F.
Wright, N.G.
Van der Meulen, F.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

2012-10-01

Worldwide, there is a need to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and to develop methodologies and tools to assess vulnerability. One of the most important goals of assessing coastal flood vulnerability, in particular, is to create a readily understandable link between the theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day decision-making process and to encapsulate this link in an easily accessible tool. This article focuses on developing a C astal City Flood Vulnerability Index (CCFVI) based on exposure, susceptibility and resilience to coastal flooding. It is applied to nine cities around the world, each with different kinds of exposure. With the aid of this index, it is demonstrated which cities are most vulnerable to coastal flooding with regard to the system’s components, that is, hydro-geological, socio-economic and politico-administrative. The index gives a number from 0 to 1, indicating comparatively low or high coastal flood vulnerability, which shows which cities are most in need of further, more detailed investigation for decision-makers. Once its use to compare the vulnerability of a range of cities under current conditions has been demonstrated, it is used to study the impact of climate change on the vulnerability of these cities over a longer timescale. The results show that CCFVI provides a means of obtaining a broad overview of flood vulnerability and the effect of possible adaptation options. This, in turn, will allow for the direction of resources to more in-depth investigation of the most promising strategies.

Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Index (CCFVI)
urbanised deltas
climate change

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:96ba9392-3188-40fb-be51-5ca9eefb4f9f

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0234-1

Springer-Verlag

1573-0840

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-012-0234-1

Natural hazards, 64(1)2012

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c)2012 Balica, S.F., Wright, N.G., Van der Meulen, F. and Springer