Berlin 2012 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 9: Energy and Environment

SOE 9.6: Vortrag

Dienstag, 27. März 2012, 12:30–12:45, H 0110

The influence of sea level rise on coastal flood damages — •Markus Boettle, Diego Rybski, and Jürgen P. Kropp — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany

The estimation of costs due to climate change and the identification of possible adaptation measures are of particular interest at coastal regions threatend by sea level rise. In terms of cost-benefit analysis one wants to quantify how efficient adaptation measures are and when their investments are amortized. Thus, reliable damage estimations, especially in the context of rising mean sea levels, are needed. We propose a probabilistic framework and study the general effect of sea level rise and changing variability of extreme events on coastal flood damages. Surprisingly simple relations describing the interplay between mean sea levels and economic losses are found. Moreover, taking into account protection measures, which may reduce the impacts from moderate flooding (e.g. by sea dikes), we obtain further expressions for the decay of damages if a predefined protection level is supposed. Applying the approach to the city of Copenhagen, our general results can be confirmed and a steeper increase of expected damages than the rise of mean sea levels is found. Our findings have important implications for the estimation of future damages and therefore for the allocation of adaptation funds.