Coastal Hazards: Multi-hazard controls on Flooding and Erosion (CHAMFER)
Lead Research Organisation:
NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE
Department Name: Science and Technology
Abstract
Coastal hazards pose a significant risk to people, property, and infrastructure worldwide and in the UK. For example, over 1.8 million homes are at risk of coastal flooding and erosion in England alone and coastal flooding is recognized as one of the top two environmental hazards in terms of impact in the 2020 National Risk Register. The occurrence, intensity and impacts of coastal flooding and erosion are projected to increase with climate change and will have major socio-economic consequences. Historically, coastal protection has relied on overwhelming use of hard engineered defence schemes, but adverse effects and high costs of these schemes have driven advocacy of coastal practices that are based on Working with Natural Processes (WWNP). However, future changes in regional sea level, storms, pluvial and fluvial inputs, coastal habitats, and their interrelations lead to significant epistemic uncertainties (due to limited knowledge) about controls on flooding and erosion and limit the implementation of WWNP schemes. Questions remain on how multiple terrestrial and marine drivers of extreme hydrodynamic conditions will combine to control coastal flooding and erosion in the future, on the vulnerability and efficacy of protective services afforded by coastal habitats, and on the performance of WWNP solutions on coasts that already have partial protection by traditional engineered coastal defences.
Event-scale coastal flooding and erosion mainly occur in response to synoptic scale meteorological events. These meteorological events can result in a series of individual hazard components to coastal environments, such as storm surges, extreme waves, extreme rainfall, and extreme river flows. However, these hazard components are not independent of each other, and coastal flooding and erosion commonly arise from the collective impact due to interrelated and/or successive hazard components. In other words, coastal flooding and erosion are controlled by multi-hazards.
The CHAMFER project will characterise how multi-hazards at the coast control coastal flooding and erosion and determine how these multi-hazards will respond to climate change and coastal management. We will deliver a new community modelling system coupled across terrestrial and marine sectors, numerical simulations of which will be used to support multi-hazard analyses under present and future scenarios. This will be combined with an assessment of the role of coastal habitats resulting in national maps for protective services and vulnerabilities of coastal habitats to climate-driven multi-hazards. We will provide tools to analyse the efficacy of future WWNP schemes. CHAMFER will rely on a multi-scale approach both spatially, by considering UK/GB scales and more local spatial scales, and temporally, by considering responses to meteorological events under long-term climate-related or management-related changes. CHAMFER includes significant elements of co-design with stakeholders and we will work with government departments, public sector organisations, and industry users to inform and support coastal protection and adaptation options.
Event-scale coastal flooding and erosion mainly occur in response to synoptic scale meteorological events. These meteorological events can result in a series of individual hazard components to coastal environments, such as storm surges, extreme waves, extreme rainfall, and extreme river flows. However, these hazard components are not independent of each other, and coastal flooding and erosion commonly arise from the collective impact due to interrelated and/or successive hazard components. In other words, coastal flooding and erosion are controlled by multi-hazards.
The CHAMFER project will characterise how multi-hazards at the coast control coastal flooding and erosion and determine how these multi-hazards will respond to climate change and coastal management. We will deliver a new community modelling system coupled across terrestrial and marine sectors, numerical simulations of which will be used to support multi-hazard analyses under present and future scenarios. This will be combined with an assessment of the role of coastal habitats resulting in national maps for protective services and vulnerabilities of coastal habitats to climate-driven multi-hazards. We will provide tools to analyse the efficacy of future WWNP schemes. CHAMFER will rely on a multi-scale approach both spatially, by considering UK/GB scales and more local spatial scales, and temporally, by considering responses to meteorological events under long-term climate-related or management-related changes. CHAMFER includes significant elements of co-design with stakeholders and we will work with government departments, public sector organisations, and industry users to inform and support coastal protection and adaptation options.
Organisations
- NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE (Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Granada (Collaboration)
- Meteorological Office UK (Collaboration)
- Hohai University (Collaboration)
- Lighthill Risk Network (Project Partner)
- Jeremy Benn Associates (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Sustainable Management of Marine Resourc (Project Partner)
- Met Office (Project Partner)
- The Climate Change Committe (Project Partner)
- Peel Ports Group (Project Partner)
- Mott Macdonald (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Risk Management Solutions (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- RenewableUK (Project Partner)
- EDF Energy (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Environment Agency (Project Partner)
- Society of Maritime Industries (Project Partner)
- European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (Project Partner)
Publications
Bricheno, L.M
(2023)
Climate Change Impacts on Storms and Waves Relevant to the UK and Ireland
in Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnerships
Marthews, Toby
(2023)
The Land-ocean interface in land surface models T1.3
Payo A
(2023)
Innovative Representation of the Coastal Topo-Bathymetry and Subsurface for Flooding and Erosion Risk Reduction
in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Savastano S
(2024)
Assessment of Shoreline Change from SAR Satellite Imagery in Three Tidally Controlled Coastal Environments
in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Torrecillas C
(2024)
Sediment Thickness Model of Andalusia's Nearshore and Coastal Inland Topography
in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Wei X
(2022)
Salt Intrusion as a Function of Estuary Length in Periodically Weakly Stratified Estuaries
in Geophysical Research Letters
Description | Collaboration with Hohai University (China) |
Organisation | Hohai University |
Country | China |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Renjie Zhu, a PhD student from Hohai University (China) that I am co-supervising, gave an oral presentation about our collaborative work on "Impacts of estuarine intertidal flats on tidal propagation and estuarine circulation" at the PECS conference (Physics of Estuaries and Coastal Seas) last October in Shanghai. He is drafting a paper where the support of CHAMFER will be acknowledged. |
Collaborator Contribution | Paper now in progress |
Impact | Paper in progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Collaboration with the Met Office |
Organisation | Meteorological Office UK |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Working collaboratively across the project lifecycle |
Collaborator Contribution | They have joined the Management Group and listed as a partner in the collaboration agreement |
Impact | In progress |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | New partnership with Granada University researcher |
Organisation | University of Granada |
Country | Spain |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | BGS has offered a Visiting Research Associate position to Dr Manuel Cobos from Granada University. Dr Cobos has accepted this position in Jan 2022 and will be collaborating with the BGS-CHAMFER team for the whole duration of the project. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr Cobos has done a short stay at BGS (January to February, 2023) to share their experience on using CoastalME in southern Spain. He has also provided training on the use of the MarineTools software (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2022.105359). Participated in the first CoastalME developers community meeting hosted in BGS headquarters in Feb 2023 |
Impact | We are working on two research papers that builds on the short stay progress on both CoastalME and the thickness modelling. Also co-organizing a dedicated workshop to be hosted in Southern Spain in Setptember 2023 |
Start Year | 2023 |
Title | Update of Coastal Estuarine System Mapping QGIS plugin |
Description | QGIS plugin to provide Coastal and Estuarine System Mapping (CESM) functionality within a geospatial framework. The CESMapper plugin for QGIS has been developed as part of the Integrating COAstal Sediment sySTems (iCOASST) project, funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC project NE/J005541/1). The code was six years old and not compatible with the latest QGIS version. The BGS team has updated the plugin and can now be used for QGIS versions 3.0 and above |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | This is enabling the BGS CHAMFER team to map the different coastal and estuarine systems along the whole GB to produce the coastal typologies. The team is trialing the updated plugin and we will make it available via GitHub once we have a stable version. |
Description | CHAMFER & CO-OPT: Developing exploratory scenarios to support coastal online workshop management |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Cross working workshop with Project Co-Opt & CHAMFER. Attendees from UKCEH, St Andrews, BGS, University of Liverpool, Cranfield University, JBA Consulting, EDF Energy, Met Office, University of Bristol, Environment, National Trust, Agency, RSPB, Coastal Partners, Scarborough Council, Falkirk Council, Defra. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Interview with Bloomberg journalist (Olivia Rudberg) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
Results and Impact | Interview with Olivia Rudberg about coastal erosion. Olivia is putting together a written piece on coastal erosion with an emphasis on the Norfolk and East-Angla coastline and wanted to hear from a scientist about the combination of factors which contribute to coastal erosion and how this is likely to play out in the future. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Participation in the 1st CoastalME developers workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Eight professionals from Academia (Nottingham University, Granada University), industry (Moffat & Nichols), UKRI (BGS) got together for two days to share the experience on using CoastalME for both research and policy advice uses and delineated a plan to continue developing CoastalME as a community open source model. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Presentation about collaborative work on ''Impacts of estuarine intertidal flats on tidal propagation and estuarine circulation'' |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Renjie Zhu, a PhD student from Hohai University (China) that I am co-supervising, gave an oral presentation about our collaborative work on "Impacts of estuarine intertidal flats on tidal propagation and estuarine circulation" at the PECS conference (Physics of Estuaries and Coastal Seas) last October in Shanghai. He is drafting a paper where the support of CHAMFER will be acknowledged. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Stakeholder Workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Stakeholder Workshop to Introduce Project CHAMFER: Attendees included Environment Agency, Sepa, RMS, UKCEH, NOC, BGS, Maslin, EDF, Natural England, Met Office, JBA Consulting, ECMWF, Mott Mac |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Workshop on Transdisciplinary use of coastal data |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Organised workshop on Transdisciplinary use of coastal data at the SMMR conference in Bristol in May 2022. The objective was to initiate transdisciplinary discussions and gain a better understanding of the coastal data ecosystem. The workshop was open to all participants, encouraging diverse backgrounds across academic, policy and industry communities. Specific objectives of the workshop were to discuss (i) range and diversity of coastal data, (ii) challenges and opportunities from transdisciplinary use of coastal data, and (iii) how data and evidence are accessed, interpreted and used by stakeholders. The workshop was attended by approx 20 people. A report was writtten and posted on the project website. The outcome from the workshop has been subsequent invitation to input to the mNCEA programme via structured research interview. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://projects.noc.ac.uk/co-opt/sites/co-opt/files/documents/SMMR%20Workshop%20Report%20-%20Transd... |