Coastal Flood Defenses (Combined Gray and Green Infrastructure).
Protection (or reduction) of coastal flooding using hard engineering and nature-based defenses.
Approximately 600 million people globally reside in low-lying coastal zones, less than 10m above mean sea level. More than half of the world’s largest cities are coastal. Around 40% of the US population lives in coastal counties, contributing to 48% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Climate change-induced increases in the frequency and intensity of storminess and continuing increases in mean sea level will amplify the flood risk in the future, while many coastal cities have already been experiencing significant increases in coastal flooding (e.g., storm surge and tidal or nuisance flooding) Being highly vulnerable to flooding coastal cities require flood defense infrastructure to eliminate or reduce the risk. There are multiple ways to build defense systems against coastal flooding and storm surges, which broadly could be.
We use a wave tank (designed and built by our LAB) and demonstrate how different flood defense infrastructures (grey and green/NBS) reduce the risk of coastal flooding. We demonstrate five different scenarios.
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