Assessing unintended consequences of structural coastal flood protection

Floods are the most frequent and damaging natural hazards, with impacts expected to increase significantly due to future climate and socio-economic changes. Historically, hard engineering coastal defences (e.g., seawalls) have been the preferred and/or widely used response measures for adapting to these risks in many parts of the world. However, with the growing risks of sea-level rise and associated cost implications of maintaining/upgrading defences under extreme climates and growing socio-economic and environmental pressures, such measures are potentially unsustainable in the long-term. Moreover, continued upgrading of flood defences can lead to more settlements and increased concentration of high-value assets in flood-prone areas. Previous studies have demonstrated that such policy may also lead to a sense of complacency, potentially resulting in reduced/lack of flood preparedness and response plan. Such approach often lead to a vicious cycle of continued and prohibitively expensive investment and potentially catastrophic consequences in case of unexpected failures (e.g., Di Baldassarre et al. 2018). The aim of this project is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the unintended consequences of flood defences (also referred as the ‘safety dilemma’) and potential implications on future flood risk management policy choices based on a comparative analysis of different case studies. This project is most suitable to potential PhD candidates with programming skills or those with an interest to developing such skills.