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，导致全球海平面史无前例的上升。作为加拿大大西洋的一个岛屿省份，PEI受到了越来越多的沿海-内陆洪水风险的威胁，由于严重的海岸侵蚀，该岛的萎缩速度比之前认为的要快。在最近史无前例的后热带风暴(例如2022年的菲奥娜飓风和2019年的多里安飓风)之后，这一点变得尤为明显。如何保护该岛不受海岸侵蚀，并建立适应气候变化的沿海社区，已成为PEI要解决的最重要问题之一。因此，该项目的目标是为PEI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、风暴潮加剧和由强降雨导致的内陆洪水增加的综合影响，促进全面的洪水风险评估。CIFS系统将支持海岸适应措施的规划、评估不同海岸保护措施的有效性，以及洪灾事件的业务和紧急管理。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--这两个模型可以单独运行，也可以一起运行，以针对不同的气候变化情景进行洪水风险分析。沿海模式将模拟不同气候变化情景下跨PEI的近岸波浪和风暴潮活动的潜在变化，而内陆模式将能够模拟不同来源(包括暴雨)造成的城市和陆地洪水及其与海平面上升的相互作用。拟议的CIFS系统将是加拿大第一个支持实验室规模的沿海和内陆洪水综合事件模拟和演示的系统。鉴于过去几年来环境与环境研究所面临的沿海-内陆洪灾风险日益增加，迫切需要拟议的CIFS平台，以使加拿大环境与环境研究所加拿大气候变化与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.