Author(s): Santiago Duarte Prieto; Trang Minh Duong; Gerald Corzo Perez; Roshanka Ranasinghe

Linked Author(s): Roshanka Ranasinghe

Keywords: Coastal Futures; CoFu; Online viewer; Future projections; Coastal climatic impact-drivers

Abstract: The recently released IPCC AR6 WGI assessment states with high confidence that all coastal climatic-impact drivers (CIDs) assessed therein (i.e. Relative sea level rise, coastal flooding and coastal erosion) will increase by mid-century in almost all regions of the world. This means that adaptation is now urgently needed to mitigate or reduce the climate change (CC) induced risks for coastal communities and assets. While local scale adaptation measures need to be informed by detailed local scale impact and risk assessments, available global data sets of coastal climatic-impact drivers, such as those assessed in IPCC AR6 WGI, are very useful for identifying global or regional hotspots of potential impacts. However, these data sets are produced by different institutes and universities spread around the world and are presented in many different studies, and thus it is cumbersome to compare and contrast different projections. As a solution for aforementioned issue, Coastal Futures (CoFu), an interactive online viewer (https://coastal-futures.org/) developped by IHE Delft, which for the first time, combines several published state-of-the-art data sets of 21st century projections of CIDs, including those assessed in IPCC AR6 WGI, for different time periods and climate scenarios. CoFu enables coastal scientists, engineers, planners, managers and policy makers to quickly see how climatic impact-drivers such as (a) relative sea level rise, (b) extreme sea levels, (c) coastal flooding, (d) shoreline change and (e) extreme waves are projected to change all over the world. In addition, this viewer enables the dissemination of most recent scientific knowledge on coastal CID projections to not only many different stakeholders interested in coastal safety, coastal developments and adaptation, but also to citizens and especially the young generation to promote environmental awareness and understanding for a sustainable future. This presentation will briefly describe the data sets included in CoFu, their associated underlying assumptions and limitations, and will demonstrate the different functionalities of the tool.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC2521711920221885

Year: 2022