Flood Mortality Risk Assessment and Its Application in Coastal Flood and Sea Level Rise Adaptation
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798762192583
- Category
- Flood damage prevention
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2022
- Author
- Fanglin Zhang
Description
Climate change and sea level rise are worsening coastal flood risk to property and human health by increasing flood magnitude and frequency. The research presented herein is motivated by a case study that focuses on neighborhoods of Staten Island, NY that had a noteworthy concentration of fatalities during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Mortality risk and influential factors involving floodwater physics and potential socioeconomic and demographic factors are investigated. Then, an idealized modeling approach is used to study physical factors and their influence on the efficacy of different adaptation strategies for mortality risk reduction. Coastal neighborhood morphological and climatological vulnerabilities are examined in terms of fatality reduction benefits for two basic adaptation approaches, protective waterfront berms and retreat. Lastly, mortality risk is compared to the widely-adopted metric of economic risk in an evaluation of potential risk reduction adaptation plans for Jamaica Bay, NY.The Staten Island case study reveals evidence that a waterfront berm may have contributed to mortality by increasing the speed at which seawater rose in the neighborhoods. The idealized modeling results show that, for a berm and a case of managed retreat of an equal cost, retreat becomes more beneficial than the berm in terms of mortality risk reduction for neighborhoods with a larger aspect ratio. It is also found that berms are generally less effective for reducing mortality in regions with storms of a higher intensity. The Jamaica Bay adaptation modeling shows that across-inlet storm surge barrier can reduce risk better than waterfront berms because the large embayment serves as a buffering zone for flood waters in the most extreme events. Overall, these results demonstrate fundamental differences in the efficacy of various flood adaptation measures based on coastal and neighborhood morphology and storm climate. We recommend future adaptation studies consider these local factors and assess a broader spectrum of benefits that includes environmental quality and mortality reduction.
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