Urban land-use projections supporting adaptation strategies to climate changes in the coastal zone

Abstract

Climate change has received much attention during the last decennium and especially various mitigation and adaptation strategies. Particularly the coastal zone will feel the consequences of climate change and the associated effects like sea level rise, increased storminess and flooding. Thus there is an urgent need for local and regional spatial planners to include climate change in their planning efforts. Using modelling and simulation, we can increase our understanding of the future land-use system under influence of a changing climate and accordingly reduce uncertainty concerning decisions. The current paper describes how land-use simulations combined with climate change scenarios represented by the SRES narratives can facilitate the definition of adaptation strategies to counteract the consequences of potential climate changes. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.