Cities and Sea Level Rise
Project will include flood hazard assessment and adaptation toolkits
Dr Diane Horn, Reader in Coastal Geomorphology in Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, is part of a team which has been awarded a £110,000 research grant on Cities and Sea Level Rise funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Arup Global Research Challenge 2014.
In a world with continuously increasing urban population, much of which concentrates in coastal cities, the predictions of sea level rise resulting from climate change pose an additional - and at times dramatic - threat not just to sustainability but also to cities' survival. Adaptation to future flood risk will require more than structural defences; many cities will not be able to rely on engineering structures for protection and will need to develop a suite of policy responses to increase their resilience to impacts of rising sea level.
This project is led by Arup, a global firm of consulting engineers, in collaboration with Dr Horn, Professor Nigel Wright in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, and Professor Hans-Peter Plag in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Science at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. The research will bring together current work on flood risk from sea level rise to provide market-focussed guidance for Arup staff around the world to advise cities facing threats to people and infrastructure from rising sea levels. The project will provide tools to assess the risk to people and infrastructure, a menu of adaptation strategies and techniques, case studies and will involve stakeholder involvement from partner cities. These cities include Hull, Bristol and Norfolk, Virginia USA.
Related links:
- [Video] Dr Diane Horn on flood risk and flood insurance in the UK
- [Blog] After the flood: finding ways to insure the uninsurable without breaking the bank, by Dr Diane Horn