ABSTRACT
The resilience of coastal communities has long been precarious as the coastal environment is a highly dynamic system, prone to shocks from the wind, waves, and surges of coastal storms, as well as daily and seasonal cycles of sediment erosion and accretion. Many of the strategies used to mitigate these impacts on human development along the coast, and the conventional methods for evaluating and choosing among alternatives, are grounded on assumptions of stationarity and predictability of coastal system conditions and trends and the external forces that affect them. The unfolding narrative of climate change poses challenges to using conventional methods of assessing alternatives for maintaining and enhancing community resilience to such hazards. Assumptions of stationarity are eroding, and predictability is elusive. The rate of global sea level rise has increased in recent decades and is very likely accelerating. Scientists also have determined that the intensity of tropical cyclones has increased in several of the world’s oceans and theorize that this might be a result of global warming. Still, very large uncertainties remain about how these changes will translate into altered local exposure and associated vulnerability. Scientists are unable to estimate objective probabilities for how high sea level will get, where, and when, or how more frequently higher intensity hurricanes will occur.
