scholarly journals Creating a climate changed future with the sea level rise interactive- fiction game ‘Lagos2199’

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Keys ◽  
Matthew Keys

Story-based futures serve an important role in climate change scenario development. Stories are particularly useful in exploring sea level rise possibilities, since we know many coastal areas are specifically vulnerable to accelerating rises in sea level. This discrete change in coastline is different from most other climate change impacts, and offers a clear basis for scientifically-informed, future scenarios. We demonstrate this with a creative world-building effort set in Lagos, Nigeria, in the year 2199. Further, we employ story-based scenario development, and create a learning-oriented, web-based game that allows users to experience stories in an open-ended, text-based adventure style. This collaborative process blended scientific research, story-telling, and artistic co-creation to iteratively construct the game ‘Lagos2199’. The first use-case of Lagos2199 is documented herein, with corresponding survey results from the student users. This work has three core conclusions. First, the unique reality that sea level rise will literally re-draw maps can be leveraged as an entry-point for world-building and scenario development of the future. Second, such a scenario can be blended with storytelling, art, and music to create a multi-dimensional, immersive exploration of ecological and social change. Third, this kind of game experience can serve an important pedagogical role in climate change education. Providing the next generation of citizens with fluency in both climate change impacts and how society will interact with such impacts, is critical for providing adaptive capacity over the coming decades and centuries of accelerating global change.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne C. Moser ◽  
John Tribbia

Coastal California has witnessed persistent sea-level rise (10-20 cm) along its southern and central open ocean coastal sections and in San Francisco Bay over the past century. This paper aims to understand the perceptions of local coastal managers in California of current inundation-related risks, the added risks from climate change, and vulnerability to the growing coastal problems. We also explore the extent to which coastal managers are beginning to think about and tackle these increasing management challenges. Survey results presented here suggest that inundation already creates critical management challenges in California, but other, non-inundation-related coastal problems also vie for managers' attention. Despite high awareness of global warming and moderately good understanding of potential impacts of climate change on coastal areas, currently pressing issues and limited staff time and resources constrain their ability to begin dealing with the growing risks from sea-level rise. The sobering conclusion is that California is inadequately preparing for the impacts of climate change on coastal areas at this time. Local government will need substantial support from state and federal agencies if the level of preparedness for climate change and other inundation-related risks is to be elevated in the future.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAM DOUGLAS HENRY ◽  
ANDREAS EGELUND CHRISTENSEN ◽  
REBECCA HOFMANN ◽  
IVO STEIMANIS ◽  
BJÖRN VOLLAN

SUMMARYTime discounting – the degree to which individuals value current more than future resources – is an important component of natural resource conservation. As a response to climate change impacts in island communities, such as sea level rise, discounting the future can be a rational response due to increased stress on natural resources and uncertainty about whether future generations will have the same access to the same resources. By incorporating systematic responses of discount rates into models of resource conservation, realistic expectations of future human responses to climate change and associated resource stress may be developed. This paper illustrates the importance of time discounting through a theoretical agent-based model of resource use in island communities. A discount rate change can dramatically change projections about future migration and community-based conservation efforts. Our simulation results show that an increase in discount rates due to a credible information shock about future climate change impacts is likely to speed resource depletion. The negative impacts of climate change are therefore likely to be underestimated if changes in discount rates and emerging migration patterns are not taken into account.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony George Puthucherril

Climate change and sea level rise are realities that are upon us and which will profoundly impact the lives and basic rights of millions of coastal residents all over the world. As the law stands both at the international and at certain national levels, the basic human rights of the climate displaced are not adequately protected. This paper identifies two possible displacement scenarios, based on the continued availability/non-availability of land in the face of sea level rise and other climate change impacts; namely, the sinking Small Island Developing States phenomeon, where land disappears and there is no surplus land to support habitation, and all other cases, where the coastal land is battered severely but it can be re-utilized through appropriate adaptation measures or even if coastal frontage land disappears there is still land available inland. On this basis, the paper proposes three possible solutions: (1) bilateral or regional treaties to facilitate resettlement of the inhabitants of sinking Small Island Developing States, (2) appropriate coastal climate change adaptation implemented via integrated coastal zone management and (3) creation of new arrangements under the international climate change regime to provide financial assistance and technological support to respond to both situations. Even though the primary focus of this paper is on coastal communities in South Asia, the lessons that it offers are relevant to other coastal contexts as well.


2015 ◽  
Vol 503-504 ◽  
pp. 279-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janez Sušnik ◽  
Lydia S. Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia ◽  
Niklas Baumert ◽  
Julia Kloos ◽  
Fabrice G. Renaud ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 1457-1471 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Knight ◽  
T. Prime ◽  
J. M. Brown ◽  
K. Morrissey ◽  
A. J. Plater

Abstract. A pressing problem facing coastal decision makers is the conversion of "high-level" but plausible climate change assessments into an effective basis for climate change adaptation at the local scale. Here, we describe a web-based, geospatial decision support tool (DST) that provides an assessment of the potential flood risk for populated coastal lowlands arising from future sea-level rise, coastal storms, and high river flows. This DST has been developed to support operational and strategic decision making by enabling the user to explore the flood hazard from extreme events, changes in the extent of the flood-prone areas with sea-level rise, and thresholds of sea-level rise where current policy and resource options are no longer viable. The DST is built in an open-source GIS that uses freely available geospatial data. Flood risk assessments from a combination of LISFLOOD-FP and SWAB (Shallow Water And Boussinesq) models are embedded within the tool; the user interface enables interrogation of different combinations of coastal and river events under rising-sea-level scenarios. Users can readily vary the input parameters (sea level, storms, wave height and river flow) relative to the present-day topography and infrastructure to identify combinations where significant regime shifts or "tipping points" occur. Two case studies demonstrate the attributes of the DST with respect to the wider coastal community and the UK energy sector. Examples report on the assets at risk and illustrate the extent of flooding in relation to infrastructure access. This informs an economic assessment of potential losses due to climate change and thus provides local authorities and energy operators with essential information on the feasibility of investment for building resilience into vulnerable components of their area of responsibility.


Author(s):  
Baeg Lee ◽  
Hyun-Han Kwon

<p>The Saemangeum Sea Dike, completed in 2011 in South Korea, is the longest sea dike in the world. One of the most pressing issues of today, climate change leads to sea level rise that could increase the risk of sea dike overflow. However, what impact climate change will have on the Saemangeum Sea Dike has not been verified yet. Here, we estimate the impacts of sea level rise on the Saemangeum Sea Dike, using the Linear Regression Analysis method and the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) method. The sea level data of the Saemangeum area of the last 30 years was analysed and the results showed that the maximum rate of sea level rise of the Saemangeum Sea Dike is at 2.51 mm/year when the EEMD method was applied. It means that the impact of sea level rise on the Saemangeum sea dike is reasonably low because the sea level rise will exceed the freeboard after 366 years, so there is currently no clear sign that it poses a problem.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 556-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina A. Adelaine ◽  
Mizuki Sato ◽  
Yufang Jin ◽  
Hilary Godwin

AbstractIntroductionAlthough many studies have delineated the variety and magnitude of impacts that climate change is likely to have on health, very little is known about how well hospitals are poised to respond to these impacts.Hypothesis/ProblemThe hypothesis is that most modern hospitals in urban areas in the United States need to augment their current disaster planning to include climate-related impacts.MethodsUsing Los Angeles County (California USA) as a case study, historical data for emergency department (ED) visits and projections for extreme-heat events were used to determine how much climate change is likely to increase ED visits by mid-century for each hospital. In addition, historical data about the location of wildfires in Los Angeles County and projections for increased frequency of both wildfires and flooding related to sea-level rise were used to identify which area hospitals will have an increased risk of climate-related wildfires or flooding at mid-century.ResultsOnly a small fraction of the total number of predicted ED visits at mid-century would likely to be due to climate change. By contrast, a significant portion of hospitals in Los Angeles County are in close proximity to very high fire hazard severity zones (VHFHSZs) and would be at greater risk to wildfire impacts as a result of climate change by mid-century. One hospital in Los Angeles County was anticipated to be at greater risk due to flooding by mid-century as a result of climate-related sea-level rise.ConclusionThis analysis suggests that several Los Angeles County hospitals should focus their climate-change-related planning on building resiliency to wildfires.AdelaineSA, SatoM, JinY, GodwinH. An assessment of climate change impacts on Los Angeles (California USA) hospitals, wildfires highest priority. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2017;32(5):556–562.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ware ◽  
Andrew Buckwell ◽  
Rodger Tomlinson ◽  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton ◽  
Neil Lazarow

Climate change impacts, sea level rise, and changes to the frequency and intensity of storms, in particular, are projected to increase the coastal land and assets exposed to coastal erosion. The selection of appropriate adaptation strategies requires an understanding of the costs and how such costs will vary by the magnitude and timing of climate change impacts. By drawing comparisons between past events and climate change projections, it is possible to use experience of the way societies have responded to changes to coastal erosion to inform the costs and selection of adaptation strategies at the coastal settlement scale. The experience of implementing a coastal protection strategy for the Gold Coast’s southern beaches between 1964 and 1999 is compiled into a database of the timing, units, and cost of coastal protection works. Records of the change to shoreline position and characteristics of local beaches are analysed through the Bruun model to determine the implied sea level rise at the time each of the projects was completed. Finally, an economic model updates the project costs for the point in the future based on the projected timing of sea level rise and calculates a net present value (NPV) for implementing a protection strategy, per km, of sandy beach shoreline against each of the four representative concentration pathways (RCP) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to 2100. A key finding of our study is the significant step-up in expected costs of implementing coastal protection between RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5—from $573,792/km to $1.7 million/km, or a factor of nearly 3, using a social discount rate of 3%. This step-up is by a factor of more than 6 at a social discount rate of 1%. This step-up in projected costs should be of particular interest to agencies responsible for funding and building coastal defences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Miura ◽  
Philip C. Dinenis ◽  
Kyle T. Mandli ◽  
George Deodatis ◽  
Daniel Bienstock

It is generally acknowledged that interdependent critical infrastructure in coastal urban areas is constantly threatened by storm-induced flooding. Due to changing climate effects, such as sea level rise (SLR), the occurrence of catastrophic events will be more frequent and may trigger an increased likelihood of severe hazards. Planning a protective measure or mitigation strategy is a complex problem given the constraints that it must fit within a prescribed and limited fiscal budget and be beneficial to the community it protects both socially and economically. This article proposes a methodology for optimizing protective measures and mitigation strategies for interdependent infrastructures subjected to storm-induced flooding and climate change impacts such as SLR. Optimality is defined in this methodology as a maximum reduction in overall expected losses within a prescribed budget (compared to the expected losses in the case of doing nothing for protection/mitigation). Protective measures can include seawalls, barriers, artificial dunes, restoration of wetlands, raising individual buildings, sealing parts of the infrastructure, strategic retreat, insurance, and many more. The optimal protective strategy can be a combination of several protective measures implemented over space and time. The optimization process starts with parameterizing the protective measures. Storm-induced flooding and SLR, and their corresponding consequences, are estimated using a GIS-based subdivision-redistribution methodology (GISSR) developed by the authors for finding a rough solution in the first brute-force iterations of the optimization loop. A storm surge computational model called GeoClaw is subsequently used to simulate ensembles of synthetic storms in order to fine-tune and achieve the optimal solution. Damage loss, including economic impacts, is quantified based on calculated flood estimates. The suitability of the potential optimal solution is examined and assessed with input from stakeholders' interviews. It should be mentioned that the results and conclusions provided in this work depend on the assumptions made about future sea level rise (SLR). The authors acknowledge that there are other, more severe predictions for sea level rise (SLR), than the one used in this paper.


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