Delta Life 7

26 The short memories of local residents are precisely the danger. Vulnerable spots on the coast are being occupied by large numbers of companies, residential areas or holiday parks. So the potential impact of these storms on coastal areas has now increased considerably. That was seen by, for example, the authorities and residents of Kristianstad in Sweden, one of the places studied by the project. The authorities and residents were not at all convin­ ced at first of the urgency of measures to protect them from rare storm surges. Extreme weather events are rare. Until the autumn of 2016, when a storm hit precisely at this location. The impact corresponded largely to the forecasts from the RISC-KIT model. The local people are much more convinced now about the importance of steps to protect them in the future from storms of this kind. And action can be taken soon because the researchers of RISC-KIT have already studied everything in detail. Erosion People are also using the RISC-KIT instruments in the Tordera Delta in Spain. The main issue here is the erosion affecting Catalonia. Using the instruments developed in the RISC-KIT project, the most vulnerable areas on the coast have been identified and several solutions have been tested. This is being done in close collaboration with an employee from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment so that the results of the study can be used immediately in the development of measures for local coastal protection. Residents Residents and stakeholders have been expressly invited to participate in the consultations. In practice, that produces totally different solutions. For example, two adjacent German villages arrived at different outcomes using the same proce­ dure. One village had traditionally been more interested in tourism and so they wanted a nice beach with a low dike for coastal protection. The other village depends on fishing and so they actually preferred a high dike. The instruments that have been developed are now also being used in Denmark, on the Marshall Islands and in West Africa. RISC-KIT PROJECT Five instruments at ten coastal locations The RISC-KIT project involves collaboration between hydrodynamics experts, morphologists, geographers, historians, social scientists and economists with the aim of mapping out risks and local solutions. First of all, they are establishing a European database of recent and historical storms. They are also identifying the coastal areas that are most at risk. They will thenmake calcula­ tions for each solution to determine how effective it is in terms of limiting the impact of storms, with and without the effect of climate change. Finally, a method has been developed to present the pros and cons of the possible measures and discuss themwith end users and stake­ holders, who will determine the optimal choice together using a scoring system. The result: five instruments that have been tested at ten locations on the coasts of all the seas of Europe: the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. Damage in the coastal town of Praia de Faro after the spring storm in 2010 IMAGE RISC-KIT