The impacts of coastal flooding and sea level rise on critical infrastructure: a novel storyline approach

Abstract

This study presents an event-based storyline framework to assess the influence of future climatic and socioeconomic conditions on coastal flood impacts to critical infrastructure. The framework combines well-established quantitative methods of sea level rise, coastal inundation, and critical infrastructure (CI) physical damage assessments into an integrated modelling approach. We apply our approach to re-imagine three historic events: storm Xaver, storm Xynthia, and a storm surge event along the coast of Emilia Romagna (Italy). Our results indicate that northern Germany would benefit mostly from coordinated adaptation action to reduce the flood impact, whereas the southwestern coast of France would find the highest damage reduction through asset-level ‘autonomous’ adaptation action. Our approach helps to improve the scientific understanding of how coastal flood risk are assessed and best managed, and forces a distillation of the science into an accessible narrative to support policymakers and asset owners to make progress towards more climate-resilient coastal communities.