Innovative Solutions for Mitigating Coastal Flooding in a Context of Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

Many coastal cities internationally are caught in a pincer effect when it comes to flooding in the context of climate change. Runoff from inland areas is increasing at pace with impervious surface cover, and at the same time an increasing amount of seawater is entering urban rivers with heightened sea levels that are projected to rise between 0.3 and 1.1 m by the end of this century ^[1]. Conventional flood mitigation strategies that focus on discharging inland runoff into rivers as quickly as possible, and coastal defense strategies involving engineering structures with a single function (e.g., sea walls) are no longer adequate. At the same time, reinforcing those structures’ capacity is not socially and economically attractive. Many coastal cities are increasingly supplementing such strategies with those that reduce inland runoff on municipal land at source through blue green infrastructure (or LIDs/IUWMs). However, within developed and vulnerable areas of cities, these strategies often involve facility retrofits located in the wrong place and with inadequate volume to meet this threat. There is a burning need for new approaches.  

This Special Issue brings together leading research that introduces or advances innovative approaches for mitigating coastal city flooding.

We invite original research, methods, systematic reviews, and critical discussion papers on new ideas that deal with novel design, planning policy, governance or management approaches on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Large areas/networks of public green infrastructure at the land–water interface designed not only to protect cities from flooding, but to provide other functions, like recreation.
• Returning large grey infrastructure areas or networks to blue green infrastructure in the inner city.
• Restoring and expanding municipal or privately owned wetlands, riparian corridors, and floodplains through innovative development controls.
• Evaluating the capability and suitability of large or interconnected privately-owned land parcels for flood mitigation, while providing benefits to landowners, such as the re-sale of water or green branding.
• Innovative water governance approaches, e.g., eco-industrial or eco-agricultural complexes/parks, and public–private partnerships.
• Strategies and policies that increase widespread water infiltration in cities (e.g., sponge or permeable city strategies).
• Adapting cities to flooding through raising the first-floor level of flood-prone buildings, requiring floodable land uses (e.g., agricultural land), or urban open space as temporary storage.
• Using vegetated drainage systems to slow the channel flow rate, while optimizing the retention volume through innovative design.
• Designing for backup systems/redundancy for when flood management strategies fail.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Reference

[1] Oppenheimer, M., B.C. Glavovic , J. Hinkel, R. van de Wal, A.K. Magnan, A. Abd-Elgawad, R. Cai, M. Cifuentes-Jara, R.M. DeConto, T. Ghosh, J. Hay, F. Isla, B. Marzeion, B. Meyssignac, and Z. Sebesvari. Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities. In IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate; H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.); Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 2019; pp. 321-445. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157964.006.

Dr. Wendy McWilliam
Dr. Gillian Lawson
Guest Editors

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• coastal city flooding
• climate change
• flood resilience
• supplemental flood mitigation
• strategic flooding
• flood defense
• flood adaptation
• flood storage
• flood infiltration
• slowing rate of flooding
• green infrastructure
• blue green infrastructure
• private land flood mitigation
• blue green network strategies
• eco-industrial complexes
• eco-agricultural complexes