Article from Terra et Aqua, Number 122, March 2011 

Will Ports Become Forts? Climate Change Impacts, Opportunities and Challenges

While many studies characterise the causes of sea-level rise, attempt to measure and predict its rate of change, the focus on planning for the response that would be required to protect coastal communities in the event that sea-level rise does occur on a significant scale has been comparatively small. Understanding that many ports could face similar challenges at roughly the same time and the constraints for such a response caused by this has also been given little attention. This article presents the Stanford University Policy and Engineering Responses to Sea Level Rise (SUPERSLR) project that has examined various solutions featuring “hard” (e.g., seawalls) and “soft” (e.g., managed retreat) measures that would be suitable for the different conditions found at coastal and port cities worldwide. Three particularly important areas of investigation are reviewed here: The quantification of resources, time, and cost required to implement the “hard” solution of constructing coastal defenses; A survey of the world’s port authorities; and barriers to decision making in seaport systems

Photo: David Davies / CC BY-SA