IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcli/v8y2018i9d10.1038_s41558-018-0260-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climatic and socioeconomic controls of future coastal flood risk in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Michalis I. Vousdoukas

    (Joint European Research Centre (JRC)
    University of the Aegean)

  • Lorenzo Mentaschi

    (Joint European Research Centre (JRC))

  • Evangelos Voukouvalas

    (Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A.)

  • Alessandra Bianchi

    (Arcadia SIT)

  • Francesco Dottori

    (Joint European Research Centre (JRC))

  • Luc Feyen

    (Joint European Research Centre (JRC))

Abstract

Rising extreme sea levels (ESLs) and continued socioeconomic development in coastal zones will lead to increasing future flood risk along the European coastline. We present a comprehensive analysis of future coastal flood risk (CFR) for Europe that separates the impacts of global warming and socioeconomic development. In the absence of further investments in coastal adaptation, the present expected annual damage (EAD) of €1.25 billion is projected to increase by two to three orders of magnitude by the end of the century, ranging between 93 and €961 billion. The current expected annual number of people exposed (EAPE) to coastal flooding of 102,000 is projected to reach 1.52–3.65 million by the end of the century. Climate change is the main driver of the future rise in coastal flood losses, with the importance of coastward migration, urbanization and rising asset values rapidly declining with time. To keep future coastal flood losses constant relative to the size of the economy, flood defence structures need to be installed or reinforced to withstand increases in ESLs that range from 0.5 to 2.5 m.

Suggested Citation

  • Michalis I. Vousdoukas & Lorenzo Mentaschi & Evangelos Voukouvalas & Alessandra Bianchi & Francesco Dottori & Luc Feyen, 2018. "Climatic and socioeconomic controls of future coastal flood risk in Europe," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(9), pages 776-780, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:9:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0260-4
    DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0260-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0260-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41558-018-0260-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. P. Subraelu & Abdel Azim Ebraheem & Mohsen Sherif & Ahmed Sefelnasr & M. M. Yagoub & Kakani Nageswara Rao, 2022. "Land in Water: The Study of Land Reclamation and Artificial Islands Formation in the UAE Coastal Zone: A Remote Sensing and GIS Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-28, November.
    2. Vincent T. M. Zelst & Jasper T. Dijkstra & Bregje K. Wesenbeeck & Dirk Eilander & Edward P. Morris & Hessel C. Winsemius & Philip J. Ward & Mindert B. Vries, 2021. "Cutting the costs of coastal protection by integrating vegetation in flood defences," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Meri Davlasheridze & Qin Fan & Wesley Highfield & Jiaochen Liang, 2021. "Economic impacts of storm surge events: examining state and national ripple effects," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 1-20, May.
    4. Gabriel Bachner & Daniel Lincke & Jochen Hinkel, 2022. "The macroeconomic effects of adapting to high-end sea-level rise via protection and migration," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    5. Andrew Russell & Paul Sayers, 2022. "Assessing Future Flood Risk and Developing Integrated Flood Risk Management Strategies: A Case Study from the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-14, October.
    6. Mahdi Bitarafan & Kambod Amini Hosseini & Sarfaraz Hashemkhani Zolfani, 2023. "Evaluating Natural Hazards in Cities Using a Novel Integrated MCDM Approach (Case Study: Tehran City)," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-18, April.
    7. Weibin Lin & Yimin Sun & Steffen Nijhuis, 2024. "Comparison of Compact and Decentralized Urban Development Pathways for Flood Mitigation in Urbanizing Deltas—Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta as a Case Study," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Theodoros Chatzivasileiadis & Ignasi Cortes Arbues & Jochen Hinkel & Daniel Lincke & Richard S. J. Tol, 2023. "Actualised and future changes in regional economic growth through sea level rise," Papers 2401.00535, arXiv.org.
    9. Jan-Ludolf Merkens & Athanasios T. Vafeidis, 2018. "Using Information on Settlement Patterns to Improve the Spatial Distribution of Population in Coastal Impact Assessments," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    10. Max Tesselaar & W. J. Wouter Botzen & Timothy Tiggeloven & Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts, 2023. "Flood insurance is a driver of population growth in European floodplains," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    11. Lilai Xu & Shengping Ding & Vilas Nitivattananon & Jianxiong Tang, 2021. "Long-Term Dynamic of Land Reclamation and Its Impact on Coastal Flooding: A Case Study in Xiamen, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-18, August.
    12. Michalis I. Vousdoukas & Panagiotis Athanasiou & Alessio Giardino & Lorenzo Mentaschi & Alessandro Stocchino & Robert E. Kopp & Pelayo Menéndez & Michael W. Beck & Roshanka Ranasinghe & Luc Feyen, 2023. "Small Island Developing States under threat by rising seas even in a 1.5 °C warming world," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1552-1564, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:9:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0260-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.