Intensification of Storm Surges 2008

Limitations of the research:

1. The relative likelihoods of alternative storm surge scenarios have not been assessed in this research. Following Nicholls et al (2007), a homogeneous future increase of 10% in extreme water levels during tropical storms is assumed. In all likelihood, regions of the world may experience a smaller increase and others a larger increase. Better local modeling of the impact of climate change on storm intensities (with the support of hurricane generator models) is needed to better forecast changes in storm surges.

2. Among the 84 developing countries included in this analysis, our estimation is restricted to coastal segments where historical storm surges have been documented.

3. The absence of a global database on shoreline protection has prevented us from incorporating the effect of existing protection measures (e.g., sea dikes) on exposure estimates.

4. Lack of spatially disaggregated secondary information on indicators prevented us from including small islands in this analysis.

5. The impacts of intensification of storm surges and SLR have been assessed using existing population, socio-economic conditions and patterns of land use, rather than attempting to predict their future states. Human activity is generally increasing more rapidly in coastal areas and thus the impacts of storm surges will be more pronounced in these areas. This effect is countered by adaptation measures (e.g., sea dikes), which we also do not attempt to estimate in this exercise. Adaptation measures from the purely technological (e.g., coastal embankments), to coastal-zone management (e.g., land-use planning, regulations, relocation) are often context, location and community-specific. Thus in our analysis, we refrain from generalizing any adaptive measures across our sub-set of developing countries.