Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Roberto Villalobos Herrera, Professor Hayley Fowler
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
Research into potential implications of climate change on flood hazard has made significant progress over the past decade, yet efforts to translate this research into practical guidance for flood estimation remain in their infancy. In this commentary, we address the question: how best can practical flood guidance be modified to incorporate the additional uncertainty due to climate change? We begin by summarizing the physical causes of changes in flooding and then discuss common methods of design flood estimation in the context of uncertainty. We find that although climate science operates across aleatory, epistemic and deep uncertainty, engineering practitioners generally only address aleatory uncertainty associated with natural variability through standards-based approaches. A review of existing literature and flood guidance reveals that although research efforts in hydrology do not always reflect the methods used in flood estimation, significant progress has been made with many jurisdictions around the world now incorporating climate change in their flood guidance. We conclude that the deep uncertainty that climate change brings signals a need to shift towards more flexible design and planning approaches, and future research effort should focus on providing information that supports the range of flood estimation methods used in practice. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes and implications for flash flood risks'.
Author(s): Wasko C, Westra S, Nathan R, Orr HG, Villarini G, Villalobos Herrera R, Fowler HJ
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Philosophical Transactions Series A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Year: 2021
Volume: 379
Issue: 2195
Print publication date: 19/04/2021
Online publication date: 01/03/2021
Acceptance date: 10/09/2020
ISSN (print): 1364-503X
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2962
Publisher: The Royal Society Publishing
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0548
DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2019.0548
PubMed id: 33641459
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
