Cities and Sea Level Rise: Flood Hazard Assessment and Adaptation Toolkits

In a world with continuously increasing urban population, much of which concentrates in coastal cities, the predictions of sea level rise resulting from climate change pose an additional - and at times dramatic - threat not just to sustainability but also to cities' survival.

Arup has a wealth of experience and expertise in many of the areas related to coastal flooding and climate change around the world. However, there is a need for creating a consistent approach to such studies, taking advantage of the excellent work that Arup already produces in individual cases, founded on solid scientific knowledge and delivered efficiently.

Arup teams in Water, Planning, GIS, Safety Critical Design and Engineering and Arup International Development have been developing processes and tools that share a common agenda, ie resilience to future shocks and challenges. Sea level rise is one of the most prominent challenges faced by cities around the world and is an area where Arup has not only a proven track record but also a clear market interest.

In the UK, Arup has been a leading supplier on the Environment Agency and other agencies' flood risk management frameworks, working on several significant coastal flood risk projects such as Hull (the 2nd largest flood risk area in the UK after London with over 100,000 properties at risk) and Bristol (where significant economic growth is proposed on flood vulnerable land). We are working in both these cities on long term planning for sea level rise.

The Water team within Infrastructure has developed market-leading tools and knowledge in the assessment of economic damage (using the internationally renowned UK Flood Hazard Research Centre depth damage data), risks to life from flooding, flood modelling, defence design and environmental and social issues in option appraisal. Alongside this, the Arup Water team has recently delivered a report for CIRIA on infrastructure vulnerability to climate change.

The global threat of sea level rise, emphasised by the latest IPCC report (AR5), demands an integrated approach not just to the protection of properties and businesses but also urban infrastructure and services. Within Arup there are many tools that exist that can be useful to this end, such as methods for assessing the risks to interconnected infrastructure, hazard and risk assessment methods from the Sellafield resilience team, approaches to value environmental capital and novel engineering techniques to adapt to a changing environment. However, these tools and approaches currently sit within different teams across Arup's international multi-disciplinary teams and offices. This project aims to bring them together into a comprehensive, accessible and project delivery focussed methodology that can be applied by any Arup team in any office around the world.

To complement Arup's wealth of knowledge we have teamed up with the University of Leeds and Birkbeck College (University of London) to enhance knowledge and verify our work. Our association with Birkbeck also includes Old Dominion University in the USA, which has strong links with Norfolk, Virginia, the second largest city at sea level rise risk in the USA. These universities have agreed to share their existing knowledge and contacts, including a sea level rise vulnerability assessment tool already tested internationally by Leeds University and the contacts and experience with Norfolk and the various interconnected authorities trying to deal with the issues of sea level rise.

The project recognises that tools, methods and theories have true value when they are applied successfully in the real world. To this end, we have established commitments from key cities around the world facing serious challenges from sea level rise to share data and allow Arup to bench test our tools and methods. These cities include: Norfolk (USA), Hull and Bristol and possibly New York and Hong Kong, where Arup has experience in coastal management.

Given that this project has been initiated and developed by Arup, impact is integral. Specific outputs are:
- Development of guidance on identifying key/dominant risks
- Collation of potential adaptation techniques and sign posts for those most appropriate techniques
- Develop draft methods and tools
- Bench test against sample cities/sites
- Reporting and initial dissemination