Incorporating climate change in flood estimation guidance
Abstract
Research into potential implications of climate change on flood hazard has made significant progress over the past decade, yet efforts to translate this research into practical guidance for flood estimation remain in their infancy. In this commentary, we address the question: how best can practical flood guidance be modified to incorporate the additional uncertainty due to climate change? We begin by summarizing the physical causes of changes in flooding and then discuss common methods of design flood estimation in the context of uncertainty. We find that although climate science operates across aleatory, epistemic and deep uncertainty, engineering practitioners generally only address aleatory uncertainty associated with natural variability through standards-based approaches. A review of existing literature and flood guidance reveals that although research efforts in hydrology do not always reflect the methods used in flood estimation, significant progress has been made with many jurisdictions around the world now incorporating climate change in their flood guidance. We conclude that the deep uncertainty that climate change brings signals a need to shift towards more flexible design and planning approaches, and future research effort should focus on providing information that supports the range of flood estimation methods used in practice.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1098/rsta.2019.0548
Entities
People
- Conrad Wasko
- Gabriele Villarini
- Harriet G. Orr
- Hayley Fowler
- Roberto Villalobos Herrera
- Rory Nathan
- Seth Westra
Organizations
- Australian Research Council
- Environment Agency
- European Research Council
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Newcastle University
- Royal Society
- United States Army Corps of Engineers
- University of Adelaide
- University of Costa Rica
- University of Iowa
- University of Melbourne