Coastal flooding risk assessment at Garachico: Canary Islands

Coastal Hazards are a topic of great interest for managers, given the possible socio-economic consequences associated with them. Specifically, investigating coastal flooding is particularly critical to assess the risk related to extreme ocean events. Also, climate change impacts will potentially increase the risks associated with it. In this sense, a critical parameter to predict the occurrence of flooding in vulnerable areas is the wave runup. In this study, the estimation of wave runup and overtopping were based on several published empirical formulas, derived from field and laboratory experiments, mainly depending on the oceanographic parameters, and the geomorphology of the beach or geometry of the structure. This study aims to 1) investigate the ability of expressions found in the literature to compute wave runup into a rocky and steep bottom at Garachico Island (Spain), by comparing it with past historical events; and 2) assess the risks of coastal flooding based on return periods (response approach) for extreme events using the tilted bathtub approach for evaluating the flooding extension, considering current and future conditions. Moreover, the effect of sea-level rise on different IPCC (Assessment Report 6) scenarios were evaluated. This study will contribute to the development of a methodology to assess coastal flooding, especially for areas characterized by rocky and steep bottoms, which represents a gap in the literature. This thesis had the support from the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree (EMJMD) program, within the Master’s in Water and Coastal Management (WACOMA), that aims at developing common understanding and deepening scientific knowledge in the vital, challenging, and continuously evolving field of water and coastal ecosystems.