Suchergebnisse

Coastal communities are experiencing a gradual increase in flooding. Studies focus on the extent and depth of how coastal flooding will change as sea levels rise and impacts on infrastructure needed for risk assessments. However, there is limited information on how the duration of coastal flooding will change; specifically, in a format needed to support risk assessments. Therefore, the objective of this article is to highlight the need for annual exceedance probability curves by examining potential impacts on infrastructure in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. The analysis translates tide data to simulate stationarity and combines it with increments of rising sea levels to represent future tide elevations. The authors use a Poisson probability distribution to calculate flood duration exceedance levels for a specified threshold level and estimate how durations and probabilities could change over time. The article concludes with an assessment of how increasing flood durations can impact infrastructure systems.

Coastal communities have an uncertain future as municipalities grapple with an increase in the frequency of coastal flooding. This article offers a simple approach to make decisions based on systems thinking. The objective of this article is to explore how to represent the coast as a system, how to apply systems thinking to coastal infrastructure, and to offer a framework to employ an integrated systems approach. The framework aids a community to map its future in the face of the changing coastal waters and a way to assess if they are moving toward a solution. It also provides a disciplined way of structured thinking to judge a problem and determine whether a hard or soft systems approach is appropriate. This kind of thinking is necessary for a community to plan capital improvement investments that are compatible with an uncertain future brought about by climate change.