COASTAL RISK ASSESSMENT IN A TIME-VARYING CLIMATE

A methodology to assess flooding and erosion risk in coastal areas due to changes in coastal dynamics and sea level rise is presented. The methodology proposed is based in the Source-Pathway-Receptor-Consequences (SPRC) approach which simplifies the integration of the risk into homogeneous impact units. The general methodology includes three fundamental steps: first, the definition of sources and pathways (or coastal defence units), in order to split the coast into homogeneous impact units (SP), second, the definition of the coastal hazard and its statistical characterization, for the present climate and considering recent long-term trends, and finally, the evaluation of risk considering, for each impact unit, the exposure and vulnerability, which are directly linked to the consequences or damages on the inland system (RC). In this study we focus on the definition of sources and hazards and their statistical characterization applied to a specific local scale area, i.e. Santander (Spain). We propose a methodology to downscale marine dynamics to the objective points in the homogeneous impact units and analyze the statistical distribution of the flooding and erosion hazards.