Flood Risks in Sinking Delta Cities: Time for a Reevaluation?

Jie Yin, Sebastiaan Jonkman, Ning Lin, Dapeng Yu, Jeroen Aerts, Robert Wilby, Ming Pan, Eric Wood, Jeremy Bricker, Qian Ke, Zhenzhong Zeng, Qing Zhao, Jianzhong Ge, Jun Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sea level rise (SLR) and subsidence are expected to increase the risk of flooding and reliance on flood defenses for cities built on deltas. Here, we combine reliability analysis with hydrodynamic modeling to quantify the effect of projected relative SLR on dike failures and flood hazards for Shanghai, one of the most exposed delta cities. We find that flood inundation is likely to occur in low-lying and poorly protected periurban/rural areas of the city even under the present-day sea level. However, without adaptation measures, the risk increases by a factor of 3–160 across the densely populated floodplain under projected SLR to 2100. Impacts of frequent flood events are predicted to be more affected by SLR than those with longer return periods. Our results imply that including reliability-based dike failures in flood simulations enables more credible flood risk assessment for global delta cities where conventional methods have assumed either overtopping only or complete failure.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere2020EF001614
JournalEarth's Future
Volume8
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Environmental Science
  • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)

Keywords

  • Shanghai
  • delta city
  • dike failure
  • flood risk
  • land subsidence
  • sea level rise

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