STOCHASTIC COASTAL HAZARDS MODELING

Coastal managers, policy makers, and property owners desire predictions regarding the magnitude and frequency of future coastal hazards. However, since the forcing conditions that govern future coastal hazards can be forecast only in a statistical sense, predicting coastal hazards in a stochastic manner is often more meaningful than predicting a single deterministic outcome. In addition, probabilistic simulations of future coastal hazards can improve impact assessments and adaptation planning by explicitly quantifying uncertainty and by better simulating the dependence structures between the complex multivariate drivers of coastal hazards. Here we report on a range of advances in stochastic coastal hazard modeling including regional coastal risk assessment, coastal flooding predictions, shoreline change simulations, and several additional new advances. In each of the highlighted examples below, stochastic boundary conditions are developed through a novel approach to stochastic climate emulation.