Identification and assessments of coastal hazards are critical for planning and developing effective management strategies to protect lives and properties exposed to coastal hazards.
We have developed an integrated tool for predicting shoreline changes due to sea-level rise and assessing the implications of adaptation measures at Port Resolution in Tanna Island. We predicted the rate and spatial distribution of the island’s shoreline change and mapped them under a range of sea-level rise scenarios.
Our analysis shows that Relative Sea Level Rise is the most influential factor followed by Coastal slope and Geomorphology over the shoreline changes. Our findings as reported in this research paper could support risk-based adaptation planning and subsequently, localised land-use planning decisions.
The developed tool/model offers instrumental insights for the spatially explicit analysis of factors affecting shoreline changes and can be used by decision-makers to develop and prioritise effective management options.
Our tool/model can also be applied to a range of environmental management problems, where either physical data is unavailable or difficult to collect, assessment budgets are limited, or local conditions are challenging for physical data collection. Moreover, it provides a user-friendly and low-cost visual assessment of environmental conditions and risks for various scenarios that would aid decision-makers to narrow down the scope of subsequent expensive detailed physical modelling assessments.
