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Quantifying Impacts of Potential Sea-Level Rise Scenarios on Irish Coastal Cities

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Resilient Cities 2

Part of the book series: Local Sustainability ((LOCAL,volume 2))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the potential economic impacts of sea-level rise (SLR) on the Irish coast, with a special focus on coastal cities. A first pass estimate of potential economic impacts is developed through the use of an Irish digital terrain model (DTM) in conjunction with a geocoded directory of Irish property addresses and historical Irish flood insurance claims data. Potential land inundation impacts and land class vulnerabilities are also presented. The headline results indicate that approximately 350 km2 of land is vulnerable under a 1-m SLR jumping to 600 km2 at 3 m. Potential economic costs relating to property insurance claims are in the region of €1.1 billion under a 1 m scenario increasing to over €2.1 billion with a 3 m scenario. These modelled outputs could be used by Irish local government authorities as inputs when developing their local adaptation plans. They also highlight the importance of fully implementing an Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) approach to foster Irish coastal resilience.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A homogenous future increase in extreme water levels during storms of 10% and a sea-level rise of 1 m were used to derive the results. The paper employed the methodology set out by Nicholls et al. (2007) for exploring a 1-in-100-year combined storm surge and sea-level rise impact. Potential GDP losses refer to the population and assets that are threatened, taking no account of any defences.

  2. 2.

    The study focuses on 136 port cities around the world that had more than one million inhabitants in 2005.

  3. 3.

    Dublin is situated on the east coast of Ireland at the mouth of the Liffey River with a population of 1.5 million including the suburban areas. Cork is situated on the south-west coast at the mouth of the Lee River with a population of 120,000. Limerick is on the west coast at the mouth of the Shannon River with a population of 100,000. Galway, also on the west coast, lies at the mouth of the Corrib River with a population of just over 70,000.

  4. 4.

    A wave climate is composed of four items: characteristic wave height and characteristic wave period distributions, direction of wave approach and duration of wave conditions.

  5. 5.

    The 2006 Census, Place of Work—Census of Anonymised Records (POWCAR) compiled by the Central Statistics Office, Ireland.

  6. 6.

    Electoral divisions (formally known as District Electoral Division pre 1994) are low-level territorial divisions in Ireland. There are 3,440 electoral divisions in the Irish Republic.

  7. 7.

    CORINE (Coordination of Information on the Environment) Land Cover (CLC) is a geographic land cover/land use database encompassing most of the countries of the European community.

  8. 8.

    Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) or Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) is a process for the management of the coast using an integrated approach, regarding all aspects of the coastal zone, including geographical and political boundaries, in an attempt to achieve sustainability. This concept was born in 1992 during the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Irish Climate Analysis and Research UnitS (ICARUS), National University of Ireland, St. Annes, North Campus, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland

    Stephen Flood & John Sweeney

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  1. Stephen Flood
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  2. John Sweeney
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Correspondence to Stephen Flood .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kaiser Friedrich Strasse 7, Bonn, 53113, Germany

    Konrad Otto-Zimmermann

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Flood, S., Sweeney, J. (2012). Quantifying Impacts of Potential Sea-Level Rise Scenarios on Irish Coastal Cities. In: Otto-Zimmermann, K. (eds) Resilient Cities 2. Local Sustainability, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4223-9_5

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