Skip to main content

Operationalising Coastal Resilience to Flood and Erosion Hazard: A Demonstration for England.

Townend, I.H., French, J.R., Nicholls, R.J., Brown, S., Carpenter, S., Haigh, I.D., Hill, C.T., Lazarus, E., Penning-Rowsell, E.C., Thompson, C.E.L. and Tompkins, E.L., 2021. Operationalising Coastal Resilience to Flood and Erosion Hazard: A Demonstration for England. Science of the Total Environment, 783 (August), 146880.

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF (OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE)
1-s2.0-S0048969721019501-main.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

4MB
[img] PDF (OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE)
1-s2.0-S0048969721019501-main.pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

2MB

DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146880

Abstract

Resilience is widely seen as an important attribute of coastal systems and, as a concept, is increasingly prominent in policy documents. However, there are conflicting ideas on what constitutes resilience and its operationalisation as an overarching principle of coastal management remains limited. In this paper, we show how resilience to coastal flood and erosion hazard could be measured and applied within policy processes, using England as a case study. We define resilience pragmatically, integrating what is presently a disparate set of policy objectives for coastal areas. Our definition uses the concepts of resistance, recovery and adaptation, to consider how the economic, social and environmental dimensions of coastal systems respond to change. We develop a set of composite indicators for each dimension, grounded empirically with reference to national geospatial datasets. A prototype Coastal Resilience Model (CRM) has been developed, which combines the dimensions and generates a quantitative resilience index. We apply it to England’s coastal hazard zone, capturing a range of different stakeholder perspectives using relative indicator weightings. The illustrative results demonstrate the practicality of formalising and quantifying resilience. To re-focus national policy around the stated desire of enhancing resilience to coastal flooding and erosion would require firm commitment from government to monitor progress towards resilience, requiring extension of the present risk-based approach, and a consensus methodology in which multiple (and sometimes conflicting) stakeholder values are explicitly considered. Such a transition may also challenge existing governance arrangements at national and local levels, requiring incentives for coastal managers to engage with and apply this new approach, more departmental integration and inter-agency cooperation. The proposed Coastal Resilience Model, with the tools to support planning and measure progress, have the potential to help enable this transition.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:0048-9697
Uncontrolled Keywords:adaptation pathways; policy; management; resilient communities; socio-economic resource allocation
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:35336
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:29 Mar 2021 15:28
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:26

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

More statistics for this item...
Repository Staff Only -