Coping with the uncertainties in the climate change adaptation of river dikes using risk-aversion economic optimization

Coping with the uncertainties in the climate change adaptation of river dikes using risk-aversion economic optimization

Wang, L.
Van Gelder, P.H.A.J.M.
Vrijling, J.K.
Ranasinghe, R.W.M.R.J.B.
Maskey, S.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

2013-06-26

To guarantee a safe flood defence in a changing environment, the adaptation to climate change needs to be considered in the design of river dikes. However, the large uncertainty in the projections of future climate leads to varied estimations of future flood probability. How to cope with the uncertainties in future flood probability under climate change is an inevitable question in the adaptation. In this paper, the uncertainty introduced by climate projections was integrated into the ‘expected predictive flood probability’, and the risk-aversion attitude was introduced in the adaptation of river dikes. In detail, the uncertain effect of climate change on flood probability was represented by the uncertainty in the parameters of the probabilistic model. This parameter uncertainty was estimated based on the outputs from the GCMs participated in IPCC AR4. The parameter uncertainty estimated from different GCMs under selected scenarios was integrated into the expected predictive probability of flooding, which was used in the risk-aversion economic optimization. Different optimal results were obtained based on varied values of the risk-aversion index. The case of Bengbu Dike in China was studied as an example using the proposed approach. The results show that the uncertain effect of climate change causes an increase of optimal dike height but a decrease of the optimal safety level. The proposed approach enables decision makers to cope with the uncertain effects of climate change by adjusting their risk-aversion attitude.

climate change
uncertainty
risk-aversion optimisation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:02586292-8ff1-4c20-bca4-bea2f5a56677

European Water Resources Association (EWRA)

8th International Conference of EWRA "Water Resources Management in an Interdisciplinary and Changing Context", Porto, Portugal, 26-29 June 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)