Climate Change Adaptation in Tokyo Bay: The Case for a Storm Surge Barrier

Increases in typhoon intensity and sea level rise could pose significant challenges to coastal defences around Tokyo Bay. In order to analyse the extent of future problems the authors determined the increase storm surge that could result from an increase in typhoon intensity and sea level rise to this area around the turn of the 21st century....

The sand engine: A solution for the Dutch Delta in the 21st century?

The Netherlands’ strategy to combat coastal erosion since 1990 has been through nourishment, initially as beach nourishments but more and more as shoreface nourishments. In the light of sea level rise projections the yearly nourishment magnitudes continue to increase. In view of this an innovative soft engineering intervention, comprising an...

The sand engine: A solution for vulnerable deltas in the 21st century?

The Netherlands’ strategy to combat coastal erosion since 1990 has been through nourishment, initially as beach nourishments but more and more as shoreface nourishments. In the light of sea level rise projections the yearly nourishment magnitudes continue to increase. In view of this an innovative soft engineering intervention, comprising an...

Coastal adaptation to climate change: A case study in Durban, South Africa

Recent research done the IPCC (2007) working groups and other organizations has sparked global concern over the possible impacts of climate change and corresponding sea level rise (SLR) upon coastal communities. In reaction studies were done (for example by Nicholls et al., 2008) to assess the vulnerability of coastal regions and get an...

An innovative approach to determine economically optimal coastal setback lines for risk informed coastal zone management

Current methods used to determine Coastal setback lines have several limitations. Furthermore, the historical practice of defining setback lines based on a single deterministic estimate is also proving inadequate with the emergence of risk management style coastal planning frameworks which require probabilistic estimates of coastal recession....

Climate change impacts on the stability of small tidal inlets: A numerical modelling study using Realistic Analogue approach

Tidal inlets are of great societal importance as they are often associated with ports and harbours, industry, tourism, recreation and prime waterfront real estate. Their behaviour is governed by the delicate balance of oceanic processes (tides, waves and mean sea level), and fluvial/estuarine processes (riverflow and heat fluxes), all of which...

A risk-informed approach to coastal zone management

Economic and population growth have led to an unprecedented increase in the value at risk in coastal zones over the last century. To avoid excessive future losses, particularly in the light of projected climate change impacts, coastal zone managers have various instruments at their disposal. These primarily concern land-use planning ...

Impact of sea-level rise in a Mediteranean delta: The Ebro delta cast

In anticipation of a comprehensive, multidisciplinary study on the impact of climatic change on the Ebro Delta preliminary results are here presented of the response of the outer delta coast to present and future relative sea-level rise. Due to the absence of observations and predictions of regional effects such as subsidence, it is only...

Vulnerability of coastal areas to sea-level rise: Some global results

Assessment of the vulnerability of the various resources of the world's coastal zones to an acceleration of sea-level rise (ASLR) and related climate change effects requires detailed global information on the distribution, density and state of the resources and on the impacting hazardous events. For many resources, such as ecosystems for...

General strategy on coastline protection: The Dutch case

Overview of the Netherlands policy on coastal protection and coastal defence

Sea defence and flood protection in the Netherlands anticipating increased sea-level rise

The 1400 km Dutch coastline is affected by sea-level rise. At this moment a legal framework is made to guarantee safety of the dikes also in future. Also a national policy is developed for compensation of all coastal erosion. Both measures should make it possible for the Netherlands to survive an increased sea-level rise.

Effects of sea level rise on coastal evolution

Using the Dutch coastal evolution in the Holocene upto the present as an example and a test case, a coastal evolution concept is proposed and materialized with which shoreline position changes for different sea level rise scenarios are predicted. The (more generally applicable) model applies to (quasi-)uniform coastal stretches. It accounts for...