Abstract
Since coastal tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism industry, coastal areas have become increasingly vulnerable in the case of flooding. While in recent years a number of different methods have been put forward to map coastal flood risks, the implications of tourism dynamics for the assessment of human casualties has remained largely overlooked in these models. This chapter examines to what extent the ignorance of (residential) coastal tourism may bias the calculations of human casualties. To this end, a case study has been conducted on the Belgian coast. Both the dynamic nature of coastal tourism and the behaviour of residential tourists in storm surge scenarios are considered. The results of this study show that including tourism dynamics in flood risk management is justified and appropriate, depending on the tourist attractiveness of the flood-prone area and its temporal fluctuations.
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Notes
Statistical sectors are arbitrary areas used to aggregate socio-economic statistics. The origin of these sectors lies in the early 1970s, when the National Institute of Statistics (NIS, Belgium) was looking for a small territorial entity as a basis for socio-economic data. Sectors were chosen with equal morphologic and social characteristics. In this way, densely populated areas were split up in many small sectors, while sectors in rural—less populated—areas generally larger.
TAW is a Dutch abbreviation for “Tweede Algemene Waterpassing”. An altitude of 0 m TAW corresponds to the average low spring tide level at Oostende.
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Financial support for this work was granted by the Research Foundation—Flanders. The authors further acknowledge the aid of Flanders Hydraulics Research (Flemish Authorities).
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Kellens, W., Neutens, T., Deckers, P. et al. Coastal flood risks and seasonal tourism: analysing the effects of tourism dynamics on casualty calculations. Nat Hazards 60, 1211–1229 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9905-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9905-6