ABSTRACT
Sea levels are rising globally, although, to what degree, is somewhat uncertain. Simultaneously, coastal populations are rapidly increasing and urbanizing. Current approaches of designating high flood risk areas typically only incorporate current or outdated standards of vulnerability, failing to adequately take into account future risk. Future flood risk considering expanded flood plains due to sea level rise and other built environment factors such as land subsidence and increased impervious surfaces must be taken into account, as these factors combine to put a significant amount of land at increased risk in the future. In this chapter, we define this future flood risk landscape as the ‘urban periculum’ – a new framework describing the collection of current and future highly vulnerable urban or urbanizing areas. We define and lay out the importance of the urban periculum to designers and planners and lay out a path for the integration of structural, non-structural, and hybrid mechanisms to combat sea level rise within this landscape.
