VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR COASTAL COUNTIES AND DEVELOPED ISLANDS Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Risk and vulnerability in coastal settings is intimately related to a specific combination of climate change phenomena and associated impacts that are not observed together in any other geographic setting. Riverine flooding, Nor?easter and hurricane waves, storm surge, rising sea level, increasing demands on freshwater resources, salt water intrusion, highly complex wetland habitats and ecosystems, and rapidly growing population and built environment all combine to produce a gently sloping, ecologically sensitive, and high-value environment that, in some cases, extends inland over 50 kilometers from the coast. Natural (e.g., sea-level rise, storm surge, erosion, flooding, hurricanes, extreme wind events) and manmade (e.g., building in low-lying areas, lack of strict setbacks from eroding shores) coastal hazards contribute to the potential vulnerability of the region and influence the health and stability of coastal ecosystems and communities. Vulnerability to these hazards is vital to understand so that coastal resource managers, municipal planners, and emergency management entities can plan for adaptation to, and mitigation of, these vulnerabilities as they become manifest in the future. We present a plan to develop and apply a new geospatial tool for providing a consistent evaluation of vulnerability to these individual hazards, which we term Hazard Vulnerability Assessments (HVAs), for the shorelines of coastal states in the southeastern United States.

date/time interval

  • October 2012 - December 2013