Beyond the Floodplain: Drivers of Flood Risk in Coastal Cities
Abstract
While the catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Katrina increased awareness of coastal flood risk, conventional approaches to flood risk assessment do not adequately represent the drivers of flood risk in the unique, highly engineered landscape of dense cities. We review the recent (1996-2016) history of flooding events and current regional climate change projection for 4 diverse coastal cities in the United States: San Juan, Miami, Baltimore and New York. Our review suggests that while all 4 of these cities face increased risk from direct coastal flooding with climate change, pluvial flooding will be an additional, important driver of risk that is currently poorly quantified. Unlike other types of flooding, pluvial flood risk is not limited to a contiguous riverine or coastal floodplain, but is instead driven by interactions between spatially variable geophysical drivers (intense rainfall, shallow groundwater, and influent tidal water), social drivers (patterns of land use) and technical drivers (urban stormwater and coastal infrastructure). We discuss approaches for quantitative assessment of pluvial flood risk, the challenges presented by the lack of data on geophysical flooding drivers in dense cities, and opportunities for integrated research to provide the scientific information needed by practitioners.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMNG41B..03R
- Keywords:
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- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 4327 Resilience;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4425 Critical phenomena;
- NONLINEAR GEOPHYSICS;
- 4440 Fractals and multifractals;
- NONLINEAR GEOPHYSICS