Capturing coastal morphological change within regional integrated assessment: an outcome-driven fuzzy logic approach

Hanson, S, Nicholls, R. J., Balson, P., Brown, I. and French, J.R. (2007) Capturing coastal morphological change within regional integrated assessment: an outcome-driven fuzzy logic approach (Tyndall Working Papers, 113) Norwich, UK. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research 39pp.

Abstract

Climate change will have pervasive effects on the world’s coasts, but at broad scales
these changes have typically proven difficult to analyse in a systematic manner. This
paper explores an outcome-driven deductive methodology for geomorphological
analysis that structures current knowledge and understanding using fuzzy logic
concepts. Building on recent large-scale coastal investigations and with reference to a
case study of the East Anglian coast U.K, the methodology defines the active coastal
system using a flexible generic classification and integrates expert opinion, using the
notion of possibility, as a basis for the assessment of potential future
geomorphological response to changes in sea level and sediment supply.
The proposed methodology produces a robust qualitative structure for assessment and
forecasting of coastal geomorphology. Preliminary results for the East Anglian coast
suggest that shoreline management is already having, and will continue to be, a
significant influence on coastal evolution irrespective of the rate of sea-level rise.
Therefore, significant potential exists to guide future coastal evolution towards
preferred outcomes by using such methods as a component of adaptive shoreline
management. This methodology could be applied to a wide range of problems both in
geomorphology and other subjects

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Contributors

Author: R. J. Nicholls

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