Coastal resilience in the face of sea-level rise: making the most of natural systems

海平面上升是人类引起的气候变化的最深刻的方面之一，其稳定但不确定的上升速度将在未来几十年改变世界海岸，威胁数百万沿海和洪泛平原居民。虽然这是从技术意义上理解的，但更广泛的社会还没有掌握下一个世纪预计海平面上升所产生的变化规模。在英国，由于其大量的海岸防御遗产，这个问题尤其具有挑战性。许多防御是不经济的维护和更新，广泛的“重新调整”计划在战略过程中的海岸线管理规划（SMP）。重新调整可以重新激活自然沉积过程，从而增强自我调整的自然保护，既减少风险，又具有美观的好处。然而，从防御海岸到重新调整海岸的转变尤其具有挑战性，这将是本研究的一个重要重点。令人惊讶的是，几乎没有人考虑如何在物质和社会的各个方面促进和实现向重新调整海岸的过渡。努力更好地了解各种适应备选办法及其实施，包括调整，在切实增强沿海地区的复原力方面可能会带来重大回报。该项目旨在开发和演示原型方法，以评估在气候变化，包括海平面上升的情况下战略性海岸侵蚀和洪水复原力的现实途径。我们将通过三个目标来实现这一目标。目的1.共同制作一套全面的代表性沿海原型，描述英格兰和威尔士的开放和河口海岸，与建设沿海复原力有关，包括现在和未来的人口统计，灾害，海平面上升，对比地貌，海岸线位置，土地利用模式和管理遗产。这将包括尽早让利益攸关方充分参与，以考虑他们的知识和经验，并确定各种原型。确定和评估一系列全面的战略性高水平适应备选方案，考虑其物理适用性、经济效率、社会可接受性和应用途径（可能的时间顺序）以及对联合王国复原力的影响。这将包括一项系统的文献审查，并与沿海群体网络和环境署共同组织的两次区域利益攸关方讲习班相结合。以三个常见的和有代表性的沿海原型，设计决策路径，以保持和提高适应选项菜单的基础上的恢复力。这将包括考虑一系列因素，包括政策选择、所涉费用、风险权衡和公众参与问题的说明和决策。这些适应途径的弹性将与代表性的真实的sites.The使用沿海原型的分析，而不是案例研究，是新颖的，并允许从个别情况下，发展通用和可转移的指导概括。至关重要的是，我们的分析考虑了英格兰和威尔士的所有开放海岸和河口，因为河口包含了很大一部分暴露于海洋洪水的资产和活动。与以往的工作相比，我们的研究将采用真正的参与式方法，这种方法往往依赖于与利益相关者的协商和“外展”。这将使我们能够与大量不同的相关项目合作伙伴达成共识，包括环境署和海事区当局的主要组织。该项目将为英国海岸过渡到更平衡，弹性和可持续的适应性选择组合提供坚实的示范，并为该领域的进一步研究提供基础。

Sea-level rise is one of the most profound aspects of human-induced climate change and its steady but uncertain rate of rise will transform the world's coasts in the coming decades threatening millions of coastal and flood plain residents. While this is understood in a technical sense, wider society has not grasped the scale of change produced by expected rise in sea level over the next century. In the UK, with its large legacy of coastal defences, this issue is especially challenging. Many defences are uneconomic to maintain and renew, and widespread 'realignment' is planned within the strategic process of Shoreline Management Planning (SMP). Realignments reactivate natural sediment processes which enhances self-adjusting natural protection with both risk-reduction and aesthetic benefits. However, the transformation from a defended to a realigned coast is especially challenging to implement and will be an important focus of this research. There has been surprisingly little consideration of how the transition to a realigned coast can be facilitated and enabled across the full range of physical and social perspectives. Efforts to better understand the full range of adaptation options and their implementation, including realignment, offer potentially significant rewards in terms of tangible enhancement of coastal resilience. CoastalRes aims to develop and demonstrate prototype methods to assess realistic pathways for strategic coastal erosion and flood resilience in the light of climate change, including sea-level rise. We will accomplish this aim via three objectives. Objective 1. Co-produce a comprehensive set of representative coastal archetypes that describe the open and estuarine coasts of England and Wales in terms relevant to building coastal resilience, including present and future demography, hazards, sea-level rise, contrasting geomorphology, shoreline position, land use patterns and management legacy. This will include early and fully participatory engagement with stakeholders to consider their knowledge and experiences and define the full range of archetypes.Objective 2. Identify and evaluate a comprehensive range of strategic high level adaptation options, considering their physical suitability, economic efficiency, social acceptability and pathways of application (potential sequence in time) and impact on UK resilience. This will include a systematic literature-based review combined with two regional stakeholder workshops organised with the Coastal Group Network and the Environment Agency.Objective 3. Taking three common and representative coastal archetypes, design decision pathways to maintain and enhance resilience based on the menu of adaptation options. This will include consideration of a range of factors including policy choices, cost implications, risk trade-offs and public participation in problem specification and decision making. These adaptation pathways for resilience will be validated with representative real sites.The use of coastal archetypes for the analysis, rather than case studies, is novel and allows generalisation from individual cases to develop generic and transferable guidance. Crucially, our analysis considers all the open coasts and estuaries in England and Wales, as estuaries contain a large proportion of the assets and activities exposed to marine flooding.In contrast to previous work, which has tended to rely on consultation and 'outreach' to stakeholders, our research will have a genuinely participatory approach. This will allow us to achieve a consensus understanding with a large and diverse group of relevant Project Partners, including the key organisations the Environment Agency and Maritime District Authorities.The CoastalRes Project will provide a solid demonstration of a transition to a more balanced, resilient and sustainable portfolio of adaptive options on the UK coast and provide a foundation for further research in this area.