Report on storm surge levels for different scenarios and different time horizons (D4.4b)

Extreme sea water levels (ESL) arising from the superposition of waves, surge and projected sea level rise constitute a threat for the coastal environment and economies, and coastal managers are facing the necessity of assessing the associated risks across a range of spatial and temporal scales that demand complex and differentiated approaches. Comprehensive regional-scale projections of ESL for the European shoreline have recently emerged (Vousdoukas et al., 2017), which, albeit inadequate for the design of specific measures, can nevertheless help highlight vulnerabilities and emerging research issues, such as the difficulty in accounting for the cascading effects from sea-level rise to effective coastal impacts, e.g. increased wave run-up, erosion and beach loss (Thiéblemont et al., 2019). In addition, regional-scale assessments could contribute to increase risk perception among policy makers and citizens, thus prompting the development and adoption of suitable adaptation and risk-aversion plans. This Report summarizes the results obtained in the SOCLIMPACT Project that quantify coastal hazard components for selected European islands, which might be more exposed and less resilient with respect to the mainland, and reports a zero-order evaluation of some cascading effects of sea level rise that are transversal to several economic sectors, in particular tourism and maritime transport.Contributors: ENEA, CMC