Development of a Laboratory-Scale Coastal-Inland Flood Simulator for Prince Edward Island

近年来，全球变暖加剧了极端降水，并导致全球海平面上升。作为加拿大大西洋沿岸的一个岛屿省份，爱德华王子岛受到沿海-内陆洪水风险增加的威胁，由于严重的海岸侵蚀，该岛的萎缩速度比以前想象的要快。在最近前所未有的后热带风暴（例如，2022年的菲奥娜飓风和2019年的多利安飓风）。如何保护岛屿免受海岸侵蚀，建设具有气候复原力的沿海社区，已成为爱德华王子岛需要解决的最重要问题之一。 因此，该项目的目标是为爱德华王子岛开发一个最先进的实验室规模的沿海-内陆洪水模拟器（CIFS），通过估计海平面上升、风暴潮加剧和强降雨造成的内陆洪水增加的综合影响，促进全面的洪水风险评估。该系统将支持沿海适应措施的规划，评估不同沿海保护措施的有效性，以及洪水事件的业务和应急管理。CIFS系统的核心将包括两个独立的模型-沿海模型和内陆模型-可以单独或一起运行，以针对不同的气候变化情景进行洪水风险分析。沿海模型将配备模拟不同气候变化情景下整个爱德华王子岛的近岸波浪和风暴潮活动的潜在变化的设备，而内陆模型将能够模拟不同来源造成的城市和陆上洪水，包括暴雨及其与海平面上升的相互作用。拟议的CIFS系统将是加拿大首个此类系统，支持沿海和内陆洪水事件的实验室规模模拟和演示。鉴于PEI在过去几年中面临的沿海-内陆洪水风险日益增加，迫切需要拟议的CIFS平台，以便UPEI加拿大气候变化和适应中心的研究小组能够找到一些可持续的解决方案，以保护该岛免受海岸侵蚀。

In recent years, global warming has intensified extreme precipitation and caused unprecedented sea level rise around the world. As an island province in Atlantic Canada, PEI has been threatened by increasing coastal-inland flooding risks and the island has been shrinking at a faster rate than previously thought due the severe coastal erosion. This has become especially obvious after recent unprecedented post-tropical storms (e.g., Hurricane Fiona in 2022 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019). How to protect the island from coastal erosion and build climate-resilient coastal communities has become one of the most important questions to be addressed in PEI. Therefore, the objective of this project is to develop a state-of-the-art laboratory-scale coastal-inland flood simulator (CIFS) for PEI to facilitate holistic flood risk assessment by estimating the combined effects of rising sea levels, intensified storm surges, and increasing inland floods caused by intense rainfall. The CIFS system will support the planning of coastal adaptation measures, evaluation of the effectiveness of different coastal protection measures, as well as operational and emergency management of flooding events. The core of the CIFS system will comprise two independent models - a coastal model and an inland model - that can run separately or together to carry out flood risk analyses for different climate change scenarios. The coastal model will be equipped to simulate potential changes in nearshore waves and storm surge activities across PEI under different climate change scenarios, while the inland model will be capable of simulating urban and overland flooding caused by different sources, including heavy rainfall, and their interactions with rising sea levels. The proposed CIFS system will be the first of its kind in Canada to support the laboratory-scale simulation and demonstration of combined coastal and inland flood events. Given the increasing coastal-inland flooding risks that PEI has been facing over the past years, the proposed CIFS platform is urgently needed to allow the research team in the Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation at UPEI to find some sustainable solutions to protect the island from coastal erosion.