Enhancing Community Resilience Through Effective Sea Level Rise Risk Communication
Presentation Abstract
Presenting sea level rise information to decision makers and communities in ways that are accurate, understandable, and useful has always been challenging. Visual depiction of annual coastal flood risk probabilities that incorporates sea level rise has been an elusive goal until now. The presentation presents an approach developed as part of the North Olympic Peninsula Climate Adaptation project that builds fully probabilistic relative sea level and extreme coastal flood projections for the region.
The projections rely on previously published data and supplemental information from Kopp and others (2014), but incorporate higher resolution local information on factors that can alter relative sea level patterns. The coastal flood risk is incorporated using publically available water level data fit to a Generalized Extreme Value Distribution, and incorporated into the sea level rise projections using a Monte Carlo approach. The presentation will cover the process for developing the probabilities along with the GIS-based maps created to visually communicate those probabilities for selected focus areas on the North Olympic Peninsula.
This approach takes into account locally-varying factors that can lead to differences in anticipated community impacts due to sea level rise and/or coastal flooding. We will also assess the efficacy of this approach, relative to a more traditional scenario-based sea level planning approach, based on presenting preliminary data and maps to communities on the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State. Overall, it provides communities with more flexibility and increased understanding relative to scenario-based sea level rise planning approaches
Session Title
Integrating Science with Landowner Outreach to Increase Coastal Resiliency
Conference Track
Shorelines
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2016 : Vancouver, B.C.)
Document Type
Event
Start Date
2016 12:00 AM
End Date
2016 12:00 AM
Location
2016SSEC
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Sea level--Juan de Fuca, Strait of (B.C. and Wash.); Sea level--Washington (State)--Olympic Peninsula; Flood warning systems--Juan de Fuca, Strait of (B.C. and Wash.); Flood warning systems--Washington (State)--Olympic Peninsula; Shorelines--Monitoring--Washington (State)--Olympic Peninsula
Geographic Coverage
Juan de Fuca, Strait of (B.C. and Wash.); Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Enhancing Community Resilience Through Effective Sea Level Rise Risk Communication
2016SSEC
Presenting sea level rise information to decision makers and communities in ways that are accurate, understandable, and useful has always been challenging. Visual depiction of annual coastal flood risk probabilities that incorporates sea level rise has been an elusive goal until now. The presentation presents an approach developed as part of the North Olympic Peninsula Climate Adaptation project that builds fully probabilistic relative sea level and extreme coastal flood projections for the region.
The projections rely on previously published data and supplemental information from Kopp and others (2014), but incorporate higher resolution local information on factors that can alter relative sea level patterns. The coastal flood risk is incorporated using publically available water level data fit to a Generalized Extreme Value Distribution, and incorporated into the sea level rise projections using a Monte Carlo approach. The presentation will cover the process for developing the probabilities along with the GIS-based maps created to visually communicate those probabilities for selected focus areas on the North Olympic Peninsula.
This approach takes into account locally-varying factors that can lead to differences in anticipated community impacts due to sea level rise and/or coastal flooding. We will also assess the efficacy of this approach, relative to a more traditional scenario-based sea level planning approach, based on presenting preliminary data and maps to communities on the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State. Overall, it provides communities with more flexibility and increased understanding relative to scenario-based sea level rise planning approaches
Comments
Full project report available at: http://www.noprcd.org/#!about2/c1yuo