Managing flood risk in coastal cities through an integrated modelling framework supporting stakeholders’ involvement: the case of Rethymno, Crete.

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Christos Makropoulos, Vasiliki Tsoukala, Kostas Belibassakis, Archontia Lykou, Michalis Chondros, Patricia Gourgoura, Dionisis Nikolopoulos

Chair(s): dr. Vojinovic

Tuesday 30 june 2015

14:35 - 14:50h at Central America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Special session, (ST) Coasts at threat in Europe

Parallel session: 6H. Special session: Coasts at threat in Europe

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Coastal communities are increasingly at risk from coastal hazards such as floods. Extreme hydro-meteorological events related to sea level rise, storm surges, heavy precipitation, shoreline erosion are driven by climate variability and increase the exposure of people, livelihoods, environmental services, resources and infrastructure to hazard. Flood risk management, which aims to reduce the likelihood and/or the impacts of floods, is considered inevitable. Rethymno city in Crete is one of the case study areas that PEARL project, an EU funded research projects – to be completed by 2017, will examine and will apply a holistic risk reduction framework that can identify multi-stressor risk assessment, risk cascading processes and strengthen risk governance by enabling an active role for key actors. The development of a multi-scale integrated modelling framework will enable the simulation of extreme event scenarios and multiple stressors derived from the ocean until the origins of the Rethymo’s river basins. The integrated modelling framework will comprise the estimation of atmospheric variables and the development of climate change scenarios, the estimation of wave characteristic based on a four level downscaling approach, the modelling of nearshore response to hurricane impacts and storms e.g. storm surges, wave propagation, sediment transport, erosion, wave diffraction and refraction, the catchment hydrological and urban flood modelling. The socio-economic dimension of Rethymno’s urban system will be achieved through the application of Agent Based Models and Cellular Automata techniques that will enable the simulation of the impact of the decision making processes of local stakeholders on the evolution of risk. The developed scenarios will take into account local conditions and flood problems as well as stakeholders’ perspective, needs and ambitions. Stakeholders’ involvement and their interactivity with the integrated modelling framework and its outcomes will assist the development of an actionable roadmap for flood risk management for Rethymno.