Crisma Framework as an experimental tool for simulation of coastal submersion impacts and preparedness for crisis management

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Marc Erlich, Agnès Cabal, Christophe Coulet, Mehdi Pierre Daou, Marianne Grisel, Arnaud de Groof, Denis Havlik, Christoph Aubrecht, Klaus Steinnocher, Sascha Schlobinski, Giulio Zuccaro

Friday 3 july 2015

12:15 - 12:30h at Oceania Foyer (level 0)

Themes: (T) Flood risk management and adaptation, (ST) Flooding along in rivers and coasts

Parallel session: 15L. Flood risk - Flooding

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The catastrophic storm surge Xynthia, which hit French Atlantic coast in February 27-28th , 2010 provoked a major coastal submersion of the decade. Combined effects of strong winds with a high tide and large waves caused failure of numerous flood defences along the coast from the Gironde near Bordeaux to the Loire Estuary and inundation, which consequently affected locations developed behind dikes. Over 50 000 ha of land were flooded, 47 people died as a result of the submersion and more than 0.5 million suffered directly from the effects of the storm surge. The total estimated damages caused by Xynthia exceed Euro 2.5 billion (Lalande, 2012), important part of it was also caused by wind gusts reaching approximately 160 km/h at the Île de Ré and the Deux-Sèvres county. During the event around 10 000 people were forced to evacuate their homes situated in the inundated areas along the Atlantic coast. After the disaster the main recommendations of the French Audit Court (Cour des Comptes, 2012) concerned an urgent need for specific tools for the assessment of a crisis preparatory phase with priorities on coastal flood risk awareness. Coping, among others with Xynthia stakeholder requirements based on these lessons the FP7 SECURITY CRISMA project (http://www.crismaproject.eu/) has designed and developed an experimental framework (Dihé et al., 2013) allowing building crisis management simulation applications. One of the five pilot applications of CRISMA was developed and implemented using the Xynthia reference event in the Charente-Maritime County in France. The paper addresses CRISMA Framework application capacity to simulate mitigation effects of a coastal submersion through a full modelling cycle. In particular, the Reference Application for the Coastal Submersion Domain capabilities of the CRISMA Framework regarding: • Simulation of submersion effects at a range of temporal and spatial scales, • Preparedness Planning, • Assessment of impacts depending on scenarios based on options for managing the inundation risks, • Cascading effects • Cost / benefit analysis is described.