Simple assessments of Coastal Problems and Design of Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management Solutions
A common challenge
Small Island States around the globe are very susceptible to natural disasters: storm surges, coastal erosion, cyclones, tsunamis, flash floods from rivers, can have devastating consequences at those countries. Moreover, these effects are exacerbated by global climate change, climate variability and sea level rise. As their population, agricultural land and infrastructure tend to be concentrated in the coastal zone, any rise in sea level will have significant and profound effects on their economies and living conditions; the very survival of certain low-lying countries will be threatened. Shared structural disadvantages and characteristics place them at an economic disadvantage and prevent economies of scale, hindering sustainable development and making them less able to recover after a disaster than larger and more diversified economies. Consequently, small island states are particularly vulnerable to the pervasive impact of natural disasters on their populations, environments and economies.
Aerial picture of Fiji
SimpleCoast
For these reasons, the best way to support the socio-economic development of those islands is putting them in the conditions of predicting the occurrence and the effects of natural disasters which might affect them, providing them with suitable solutions to mitigate the relative effects.
The aim of SimpleCoast is to develop simple and freely-available tools and knowledge notes downloadable from a website and combined with targeted capacity building actions. Among others, tools and instruments are being developed for the assessment of coastal engineering problems (e.g. coastal erosion, flooding), interventions (e.g. design of sand nourishments, structures, coral reefs), adaptive planning, simple monitoring techniques and facilitated by the use of serious games.
This activity targets practitioners from developing countries who are struggling with those issues and lack the expertise and data for more complex assessments, in particular practitioners from local and national governments, local universities or national consultants who do not have the means or skills to purchase and use complex modelling packages. Good coastal and hydraulic engineering, and socio-economic skills are essential for the proper assessment of cost-effective interventions to increase the climate resilience of these vulnerable countries. Technical capacity building can be achieved by supplying free information and knowledge, which is the best possible aid for developing countries struggling with those issues.
The project was financed by the Water Partnership Program, and frames within the Small Island State Resilient Initiative (SISRI) implemented by the GFDRR (The World Bank).
Official Reference
11/22/2017
In November 2017 the SimpleCoast team attended the MEDCOAST congress in Malta. Recently our conference paper on SimpleCoast has been published:
The paper includes a general introduction about SimpleCoast and an application example to a case study at the island of Ebeye.