Decision-support for land reclamation location and design choices in the Maldives

Land reclamation in the Maldives is widespread. Current land reclamation practices, however, lack a systematic approach to anticipate sea-level rise and do not account for local flood risk differences to inform location and design choices. To address these limitations, this paper applies two decision-support tools: a hazard threshold analysis, and a cost-benefit analysis. Both tools produce site-specific estimates of land elevations or flood defence heights but do so for different goals. The hazard threshold analysis identifies hazard-based solutions that meet an acceptable flood probability for an intended lifespan without follow-up actions by reliability optimisation. The cost-benefit analysis identifies risk-based solutions using dynamic programming. We apply both tools to two land reclamation sites, a newly reclaimed airport island and a land extension of an inhabited island, in the Maldives. We find that total hazard-based heights for long-term planning horizons are highly uncertain, with local height differences of up to 1.9 m across sea-level rise scenarios by 2100. Risk-based Island elevations, in contrast, differ much less across scenarios, offering a practical advantage for decision-making. However, land reclamation choices on location, land elevation and investment in flood protection are not only driven by hazard-related aspects, such as reef characteristics, swell exposure, and sea-level rise, but also by estimates of exposed assets, reclamation, and flood protection costs. Taken together, the two decision-support tools are helpful for improving adaptation decisions and are also applicable in other small island regions.

Van der Pol T., Gussmann G., Hinkel J., Amores A., Marcos M., Rohmer J., Lambert E., Bisaro A., 2023, Decision-support for land reclamation location and design choices in the Maldives, Climate Risk Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2023.100514

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