Research Areas

Coastal Population Development

Coastal population is currently developing up to three times faster than the global mean. This development is combined with an increasing urbanisation trend. Concerns about climate-change induced rises in sea levels have driven, in recent years, extensive research in the area of assessing exposure of coastal population and assets to sea-level changes and their potential impacts. However, previous studies rarely account for this faster development of coastal population, thus underestimating future impacts or adaptation needs. Our work explores the ways in which we can account for the differential coastal growth and develops spatially explicit estimates of future coastal population, under a range of socio-economic scenarios (e.g. SSP).