Seminars

Seminar Abstract

High-resolution estimates of coastal population vulnerable to significant sea level rise: a global and national impact assessment

Recent natural catastrophes, including the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and concerns about global warming and accelerating sea level rise, have again focussed attention on the vulnerability of communities living in low-lying coastal areas. Previous estimates of the exposed global population have invariably been undertaken at coarse spatial resolutions (e.g., at tens of kilometres) that are inadequate to assess its vulnerability. Now, thanks to the recent availability of high-resolution global datasets on population distribution (LandScan2003 from the Oak Ridge National Lab), shorelines (NOAA’s GSHHS) and elevation (NASA/JPL’s SRTM), more detailed estimates are possible. We quantify the population at risk at a spatial resolution of 1km and do this as a function of distance to shoreline and elevation above mean sea level. In this seminar, we will introduce datasets and report validation upscaling approaches based on statistical and spatial relationships between very fine-resolution Australian datasets and the recent high-resolution global datasets.

Our results show at least 2.8% (175 million) and 10.0% (630 million) of the 2003 world’s population live within 1 and 5km of the shore, and that population decreases very rapidly with increasing distance from the shoreline. At least 50 million people live within 3km of shorelines in areas with elevations below 6m. At a national level, about 50% and 30% of Australian addresses or population are located within 7 and 2km of shorelines. Among states and territories, Tasmania has the largest percentage of coastal population, with 45% of its population living in 1km from the coast. A significant sea level rise of 6m would inundate about 700,000 national addresses within 3km of the coast, and more than 60% of these vulnerable addresses are located in QLD and NSW. Impact assessment is an indispensable part of scientific explorations, and the gross estimates reported here will serve as an important historical reference on the global/national vulnerable coastal population in the early 21st Century.

*Risk Frontiers – Natural Hazards Research Centre, Macquarie University, NSW

[Back to Seminars]

CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
Karen Wild-Allen, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5010
Piers Dunstan, (Biological seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5382
Sandra Zicus, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 7888 & Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies (IASOS) University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2509