| Both the EU and The United Nations are now taking seriously the predicted climate
change scenarios of the IPCC. Of particular relevance to Integrated Coastal Zone
Management is the predicted increase in the intensity and frequency of powerful
storm events characterised by larger peak wind speeds and consequently larger
waves.
Engineering has usually been favoured in the past as the best option for disaster
mitigation at the coast. However, most engineering works are constrained by economics, and
a compromise is sought between the potential threat to lives and property and the resources
available for design and construction. Furthermore, the design of structures is based on
predicted extreme events which themselves are subject to uncertainty, especially in a rapidly
changing global climate. The huge damage to the city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina
illustrates clearly what can go wrong when the engineering design is subjected to
forcing beyond its design limits and when civil evacuation and management plans
fail.
The proposed paper will address the issue of encouraging and facilitating exchange of
information on storm impacts produced by nationally funded projects in Member States;
establishing robust data management and data quality control and engaging with stakeholders
and end users to optimise dissemination strategies. It will heavily rely on the information
produced by the MICORE Project (FP7 contract 202798), using and enlarging the database
collated by the project regarding the characteristics of extreme storm events occurred in the
last 50 years.
The MICORE project (www.micore.eu) will provide the knowledge necessary to assess
the present day risks and to study the economic and social impact of future severe storm
events. Together, these elements will have an important strategic impact on the safety of the
people living in coastal areas and upon decision processes aimed at minimising the economic
consequences of extreme events. The project will also investigate with stakeholders and
end-users the possibilities of producing EU-wide guidelines for a viable and reliable risk
mitigation strategy. One of the initial main objectives of MICORE is to produce an up-to-date
data base for each partner country that includes: an historical review of storms; an
inventory of data related to the forcing signals; quantification of the morphological
response of coastal systems to storms and to sequences of storms; an assessment
of socio-economic impact; a description of existing civil protection schemes and
interventions.
The MICORE project will identify indices for coastal vulnerability to erosion with an
integrated EU perspective using the standardised data bases assembled for all member states.
It will also recommend future data collection requirements that best serve the needs of coastal
managers. Here an area of innovation in the project is the standardization in the
production of vulnerability matrices for evaluation of society impact from storms. |