Quantifying Resilience and Uncertainty in Coastal Flooding Events: Framework for Assessing Urban Vulnerability
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143, Issue 1
Abstract
Flood resilience is a desirable state of natural and built environments in dealing with hazards such as extreme rainfalls, storm surges, and hurricanes. Here, resilience means the capacity to reach an acceptable level of functionality during and after a flood. Observations of the recent history of flood disasters in New Orleans and New York City (NYC) have suggested the necessity of quantifying resilience in these regions utilizing a floodplain’s vulnerability assessment platform. Once a meaningful and well-recognized method is developed, then resources can be allocated to increase resiliency. In this study, redundancy, resourcefulness, robustness, and rapidity metrics based on socioeconomic, manmade, and natural conditions are developed to quantify coastal resilience. Exposure and susceptibility are also defined and evaluated for quantifying vulnerability. The proposed evaluation method, which is based on the linear combination of the developed metrics, uses a multicriteria decision making technique for ranking the factors of the system and their weights. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are performed to determine the sensitivity of the developed platform to 54 different factors affecting the system’s vulnerability and the uncertainty associated with estimating the representative values and weights of those factors. The proposed platform allows identifying those factors that have the most significant impact on resiliency. As a result, resource allocation could be directed to strengthen those factors rather than ad hoc allocations without consideration of their overall impact on building a more resilient region. Application of the proposed scheme is investigated using a coastal area in the Bronx Borough of NYC. The proposed algorithm can be applied to other coastal areas in identifying effective factors on their system’s flood resiliency.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The first author was formerly a research professor at the New York University. Part of this paper was presented at the World Environmental and Water Resources Congress (EWRI) 2015 in Austin, Texas.
References
Abuodha, P., and Woodroffe, C. D. (2007). “Assessing vulnerability of coasts to climate change: A review of approaches and their application to the Australian coast.” GIS for the coastal zone: A selection of papers from CoastGIS 2006, C. D. Woodroffe, E. Bruce, M. Puotinen, and R. A. Furness, eds., Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security Univ. of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
Adger, N. W. (2006). “Vulnerability.” Global Environ. Change, 16(3), 268–281.
Adger, N. W., and Vincent, K. (2005). “Uncertainty in adaptive capacity.” C. R. Geosci., 337(4), 399–410.
Adger, W. N., Hughes, T. P., Folke, C., Carpenter, S., and Rockstrom, J. (2005). “Social–ecological resilience to coastal disasters.” Science, 309, 1036–1039.
Akiko, M. (2013). “Flood vulnerability and risk assessment with spatial multi-criteria evaluation.” Dhaka Megacity: Geospatial perspectives on urbanisation, environment and health, A. Dewan and R. Corner, eds., Springer, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 177–202.
Ashley, R. M., Blanksby, J., Chapman, J., and Zhou, J. (2007). “Towards integrated approaches to increase resilience and robustness for the prevention and mitigation of flood risk in urban areas.” Advances in urban flood management, R. Ashley, S. Garvin, E. Pasche, A. Vassilopoulos, and C. Zevenbergen, eds., Taylor & Francis, London.
Ayyub, B. M. (2014). “Systems resilience for multihazard environments: Definition, metrics, and valuation for decision making.” Risk Anal., 34(2), 340–355.
Balica, S. F., Douben, N., and Wright, N. G. (2009). “Flood vulnerability indices at varying spatial scales.” Water Sci. Technol. J., 60(10), 2571–2580.
Balica, S. F., Popescu, I., Beevers, L., and Wright, N. G. (2013). “Parametric and physically based modelling techniques for flood risk and vulnerability assessment: A comparison.” Environ. Modell. Software, 41, 84–92.
Balica, S. F., Wright, N. G., and van der Meulen, F. (2012). “A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts.” Nat. Hazards, 73–105.
Batica, J., and Gourbesville, P. (2012). “A resilience measures towards assessed urban flood management—CORFU project.” 9th Int. Conf. on Urban Drainage Modelling, IAHR/IWA Joint Committee on Urban Drainage, Madrid, Spain.
Berkes, F. (2007). “Understanding uncertainty and reducing vulnerability: Lessons from resilience thinking.” Nat. Hazards, 41(2), 283–295.
Berkes, F., and Folke, C. (1998). Linking social and ecological systems: Management practices and social mechanisms for building resilience, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Bharwani, S., Magnuszewski, P., Sendzimir, J., Stein, C., and Downing, T. E. (2008). “Vulnerability, adaptation and resilience: Progress toward incorporating VAR concepts into adaptive water resource management.”, Stockholm Environment Institute, Oxford, U.K.
Blake, R., Khanbilvardi, R., and Rosenzweig, C. (2000). “Climate change impacts on New York City’s water supply system.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 36(2), 279–292.
Bogardi, J., and Birkmann, J. (2004). “Vulnerability assessment: The first step towards sustainable risk reduction.” Disaster and society: From hazard assessment to risk reduction, D. Malzahn and T. Plapp, eds., Logos, Berlin, 75–82.
Boruff, B. J., Emrich, C., and Cutter, S. L. (2005). “Erosion hazard vulnerability of U.S. coastal counties.” J. Coast. Res., 21(5), 932–942.
Briguglio, L. (2003). “Methodological and practical considerations for constructing socio-economic indicators to evaluate disaster risk.” Institute of Environmental Studies, Univ. of Colombia, Manizales, Colombia.
Bruneau, M., et al. (2003). “A framework to quantitatively assess and enhance the seismic resilience of communities.” Earthquake Spectra, 19(4), 733–752.
Cardona, O. D., et al. (2012). “Determinants of risk: Exposure and vulnerability.” Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation, C. B. Field, et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 65–108.
Castaings, W., Dartus, D., Le Dimet, F.-X., and Saulnier, G.-M. (2009). “Sensitivity analysis and 5 parameter estimation for distributed hydrological modeling: Potential of variational methods.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 13(4), 503–517.
Chang, N., Parvathinathan, G., and Breeden, J. (2008). “Combining GIS with fuzzy multicriteria decision-making for landfill siting in a fast-growing urban region.” J. Environ. Manage., 87(1), 139–153.
Charzyńska, A., Nałęcz, A., Rybiński, M., and Gambin, A. (2012). “Sensitivity analysis of mathematical models of signaling pathways.” J. Biotechnol. Comput. Biol. Bionanotechnol., 93(3), 291–308.
Costanza, R., Kemp, M., and Boynton, W. (1995). “Scale and biodiversity in estuarine ecosystems.” Biodiversity loss: Economic and ecological issues, C. Perrings, K.-G. Maler, C. Folke, C. S. Holling, and B.-O. Jansson, eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 84–125.
Crosetto, M., and Tarantola, S. (2001). “Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis: Tools for GIS based model implementation.” Int. J. Geog. Inf. Sci., 15(5), 415–437.
Cutter, S. L., et al. (2008). “A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters.” Global Environ. Change, 18(4), 598–606.
D-Sight [Computer software]. D-Sight Team, Brussels, Belgium.
Fasso, A. and Perri, P. F. (2002). “Sensitivity analysis.” Encyclopedia of environment, Wiley, Chichester, U.K.
Fernández, D. S., and Lutz, M. A. (2010). “Urban flood hazard zoning in Tucumán Province, Argentina, using GIS and multicriteria decision analysis.” Eng. Geol., 111(1–4), 90–98.
Foglia, L., Hill, M. C., Mehl, S. W., and Burlando, P. (2009). “Sensitivity analysis, calibration, and testing of a distributed hydrological model using error-based weighting and one objective function.” Water Resour. Res., 45(6), W06427.
Goharian, E., Burian, S., Bardsley, T., and Strong, C. (2015). “Incorporating potential severity into vulnerability assessment of water supply systems under climate change conditions.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 04015051.
Goharian, E., Burian, S., Lillywhite, J., and Hile, R. (2016). “A new comprehensive vulnerability assessment to integrate performance of water supply systems under climate change condition.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., in press.
Gornitz, V. (1991). “Global coastal hazards from future sea level rise.” Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol., 89(4), 379–398.
Gornitz, V., and Kanciruk, P. (1989). “Assessment of global coastal hazards from sea-level rise.” Coastal Zone ‘89, Proc., 6th Symp. on Coastal and Ocean Management, ASCE, Reston, VA, 1345–1359.
Guillaumont, P. (2008). “An economic vulnerability index: Its design and use for international development policy.” Working Paper No. 200907, Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI), Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Hansson, K., Danielson, M., and Ekenberg, L. (2008). “A framework for evaluation of flood management strategies.” J. Environ. Manage., 86(3), 465–480.
Hayez, Q., De Smet, Y., and Bonney, J. (2012). “D-Sight: A new decision making software to address multi-criteria problems.” Int. J. Decis. Support Syst. Technol., 4(4), 1–23.
Holling, C. S. (1973). “Resilience and stability of ecological systems.” Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst., 4(1), 1–23.
Kang, B., Lee, J., Chung, E., Kim, D., and Kim, Y. (2013). “A sensitivity analysis approach of multi-attribute decision making technique to rank flood mitigation projects.” KSCE J. Civ. Eng., 17(6), 1529–1539.
Kirshen, P., Caputo, L., Vogel, R. M., Mathisen, P., Rosner, A., and Renaud, T. (2014). “Adapting urban infrastructure to climate change: A drainage case study.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 04014064.
Klein, R. J. T., Nicholls, R. J., and Thomalla, F. (2003). “Resilience to natural hazards: How useful is this concept?” Environ. Hazards, 5(1), 35–45.
Krywkow, J., Filatova, T., and Van der Veen, A. (2008). “Flood risk perceptions in the Dutch province of Zeeland: Does the public still support current policies?” Flood risk management: Research and practice, P. Samuels, S. Huntington, W. Allsop, and J. Harrop, eds., CRC Press, London.
Lee, G., Jun, K. S., and Chung, E. S. (2014). “Robust spatial flood vulnerability assessment for Han River using fuzzy TOPSIS with α-cut level set.” Expert Syst. Appl., 41(2), 644–654.
Liao, K. (2012). “A theory on urban resilience to floods—A basis for alternative planning practices.” Ecol. Soc., 17(4), 48.
López-Marrero, T., and Tschakert, P. (2011). “From theory to practice: Enhancing resilience to floods in exposed communities.” Environ. Urbanization, 23(1), 229–249.
Malcolm Pirnie. (1975). Storm drainage and flood control needs Bronx River Basin, Westchester County, New York.
Manyena, S. B. (2006). “The concept of resilience revisited.” Disasters, 30(4), 433–450.
McLaughlin, S., and Cooper, J. A. G. (2010). “A multi-scale coastal vulnerability index: A tool for coastal managers?” Environ. Hazards J., 9(3), 233–248.
Mileti, D. (1999). Disasters by design: A reassessment of natural hazards in the United States, Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 371.
Minsker, B., et al. (2015). “Progress and recommendations for advancing performance-based sustainable and resilient infrastructure design.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., A4015006.
Nie, L., Lindholm, O., and Braskerud, B. (2009). “Urban flood management in a changing climate.” Vann, 44(2), 203–213.
O’Sullivan, J. J., et al. (2012). “Enhancing flood resilience through improved risk communications.” Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12(7), 2271–2282.
Peduzzi, P., Dao, H., Herold, C., Rochette, D., and Sanahuja, H. (2001). “Feasibility study report—On global risk and vulnerability index—Trends per year (GRAVITY).” United Nations Development Programme Emergency Response Division UNDP/ERD, Geneva.
Peeters, L., Lerat, J., and Rassam, D. (2011). “Improving parameter estimation in transient groundwater models through temporal differencing.” MODSIM 2011: 19th Int. Congress on Modelling and Simulation—Sustaining Our Future, Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, Perth, WA, Australia, 3959–3966.
Peeters, L., Podger, G. M., Smith, T., Pickett, T., Bark, R., and Cuddy, S. M. (2014). “Robust global sensitivity analysis of a river management model.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 11(3), 3481–3503.
Pelling, M. (2003). Vulnerability of cities: Natural disasters and social resilience, Earthscan Publications, London.
Pratt, C., Kaly, U., and Mitchell, J. (2004). “How to use the environmental vulnerability index, UNEP/SOPAC South Pacific applied geo-science commission.” 〈http://www.vulnerabilityindex.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EVI%20Manual.pdf〉 (Jan. 17, 2012).
Renschler, C. S., Frazier, A. E., Arendt, L. A., Cimellaro, G. P., Reinhorn, A. M., and Bruneau, M. (2010). “Developing the ‘peoples’ resilience framework for defining and measuring disaster resilience at the community scale.” Proc., 9th U.S. National and 10th Canadian Conf. on Earthquake Engineering, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, El Cerrito, CA.
Saaty, T. L. (1980). The analytic hierarchy process, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Saltelli, A., and Annoni, P. (2010). “How to avoid a perfunctory sensitivity analysis.” Environ. Modell. Software, 25(12), 1508–1517.
Saltelli, A., Chan, K., and Scott, P. M. (2000). Sensitivity analysis, Wiley, New York.
Schelfaut, K., Pannemans, B., van der Craats, I., Krywkow, J., Mysiak, J., and Cools, J. (2011). “Bringing flood resilience into practice: The FREEMAN project.” Environ. Sci. Policy, 14(7), 825–833.
Smit, B., and Wandel, J. (2006). “Adaptation, capacity and vulnerability.” Global Environ. Change, 16(3), 282–292.
Tierney, K. J. (2003). “Conceptualizing and measuring organizational and community resilience: Lessons from the emergency response following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.” Disaster Research Center, Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE.
Turner, B. L., et al. (2003). “A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 100(14), 8074–8079.
UN/ISDR. (2002). “Living with risk: A global review of disaster reduction initiatives.” Geneva.
Vis, M., Klijn, F., De Bruijn, K. M., and Van Buuren, M. (2003). “Resilience strategies for flood management in the Netherlands.” Int. J. River Basin Manage., 1(1), 33–40.
Xiaoyan, D., and Xiaofei, L. (2012). “Conceptual model on regional natural disaster risk assessment.” Procedia Eng., 45(2012), 96–100.
Yahaya, S. (2008). “Multicriteria analysis for flood vulnerable areas in Hadejia-Jama’are River Basin, Nigeria.” ASPRS 2008 Annual Conf. on American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), Bethesda, MD.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143 • Issue 1 • January 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 1, 2015
Accepted: Jul 25, 2016
Published online: Sep 23, 2016
Published in print: Jan 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Feb 23, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.