Tom | Flood & Coast

Intelligent investment for resilience of distributed coastal infrastructure

Rising sea levels are increasing risks of coastal flooding and erosion to our coastal infrastructure. Effective and efficient management of these risks depends on our ability to quantify them, and understand how they will develop in the future. However, the development of such understanding becomes more difficult as spatial scales increase; methodologies are particularly needed to support the rapid and effective assessment of changing patterns of risk across large areas.

This paper will describe two projects undertaken in partnership with Cornwall County Council and Network Rail that quantify coastal flood and erosion risk across widely distributed coastal infrastructure.

The methodologies involve broad-scale modelling and GIS-based analysis operating on high quality datasets that are now freely available. They provide quantification and mapping of risk at a range of frequencies both today and in the future. This process reveals increasing probability of hazardous events and provides understanding of how and where the risk will change from infrequent to frequent, and from no risk to at risk.

Assessment of risk in this way, and weighting of the results appropriately, provides a strong basis for investment planning to safeguard these distributed assets, through either defence construction or resilience enhancement.

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2019 Event Supporters:

Tom Ashby

Tom Ashby

Tom Ashby

Tom Ashby

2019 Event Sponsors:

2019 Event Supporters: