Land-use simulation as a supporting tool for flood risk assessment and coastal safety planning: The case of the Belgian coast

Given the volatility of both natural and man-made coastal processes, coastal safety has become a prime concern worldwide. In many countries, governments have developed integrated coastal safety plans whose implementation poses complex governance issues, involving multi-level negotiations, consensus building and the reconciliation of conflicting views on coastal development. Communicating these plans is a complex issue. It involves building tools for assessment of flood hazard and for effectively articulating potential risks of flooding to decision makers, stakeholders and the public at large. This paper presents a simulation-based approach that couples the outcome of a GIS based flood hazard model with a cellular automata based land-use change model, to produce risk maps linking areas under different land uses to potential flood depth. The method allows spatially explicit analysis of population at risk given a certain storm event and is applied to the case of a 1000-year and a 4000-year storm occurring along the Belgian coast, corresponding to the risk levels included in the Flanders Integrated Master Plan for Coastal Safety. The study shows the importance of taking land-use dynamics into account when assessing potential flood hazard impacts in coastal areas characterized by a strong pressure on land resources.