Traditional and contemporary strategies to protect coastal communities from seaborne hazards alone will fail to sustainably deal with future sea level rise. In the last 2000 years, the global climate and mean sea levels have remained relatively stable, which facilitated cultivation and population of coastal areas. Marine resources are an important factor in the development of coastal and island communities, because they secure the livelihood of their inhabitants. But with rising sea levels, coastal areas are prone to be more exposed to increasing seaborne hazards. For example, when the sea level rises, structures are going to be located closer to the shoreline and waves are going to break later due to deeper waters. This, in turn, leads to higher loads on these structures. To protect against seaborne hazards and decrease the vulnerability of coastal communities appropriate coastal infrastructure is needed. To date, coastal protection structures are designed and implemented to withstand predicted loads and stresses within their typical lifetime (i.e. their "design lifetime"). Thus, they provide a certain level of safety from marine hazards. But as the climate is heating and sea levels are rising, requirements on coastal protection changes. In addition, interactions are complex between drivers and impacts of ocean-borne hazards in a heating climate. This complexity induces further uncertainty when estimating future requirements on coastal protection. To account for deep uncertainties, future adaptation strategies to climate change must become more flexible to be support coastal communities to cope with rising sea levels. This thesis outlines the traditional design approach to engineering structures and its potential to be one of several responses to rising sea levels. But it also shows the limitation of this design approach in a more complex and interdisciplinary approach to deal with climate change effects. The literature review reveals common misconceptions of the disciplinary engineering perspective on a ...
From coastal protection to "low-regret" coastal adaptation. Changing perspectives on impacts and risk assessment when dealing with sea level rise
2021-08-16
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
Small islands , Ecosystem-based adaptation , Meeresspiegelanstieg , Interdisziplinäre Forschung , Numerische Modellierung , Feldmessungen , Sea level rise , Climate change adaptation , “Low-regret” adaptation , Klimawandelanpassung , Coastal protection , Ökosystembasierende Anpassung , ddc:550 , Interdisciplinary research , ddc:629,1 , Küstenschutz , “Low-regret” Anpassung , ddc:624 , Field measurements , Numerical modeling , Kleine Inseln
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