Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment for Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Abstract: The phenomenon of global warming has become a fact, however; the uncertainty is about the magnitude and acceleration of its manifestations. Global mean sea level rise is one of the results induced by global warming and is happening with an undetectable accelerated pace. The world international organizations and governments are devoting efforts and initiatives in a trial to manage global warming induced impacts. The efforts include: assessment for the potential impacts of risks, mitigation of the risks by trying to decrease its magnitude or acceleration through developing and adhering to environmental policies, and finally adapting our environment to increase its resilience to such risks. On the other hand, governments cannot act solely to mitigate the risks of global mean sea level rise or global warming; only international as well local collaborated efforts can trigger an effective plan to manage such risks. The goal of this project was to introduce a comprehensive yet simple practice on how the Geographic Information Systems methods and up-to-date technology can be utilized in assessing the potential impacts of sea level rise. This was translated into three main objectives to fulfill: (i) Assess which areas are vulnerable to sea level rise using the best available methods; (ii) Simplify the results of assessments in the form of charts and statistics to enable stakeholders to have a quick insight on the selected sea level rise scenario potential impacts; (iii) Publish the vulnerability assessment results on a sharable platform where multiple organizations/entities can have access. The first objective was accomplished through developing a configurable geo-processing model that aims to extract the potentially inundated areas using a bathtub-enhanced method with hydrological connectivity evaluation. The model runs on the best free elevation dataset available for the area (SRTM 1arc second - 30 meters), selected possible sea level rise scenarios (1 meter, 2 and 3 meters) and United Arab Emirates boundary. The results were overlaid with multiple datasets representing different domain categories like natural environment (land-cover, natural habitats, protected areas), built up environment (land-use, industrial areas, points of interest), administrative (municipalities, districts, population), transportation and utilities (roads, transportation facilities and utilities). The final output is multiple datasets for each sea level rise scenario representing each domain category vulnerable areas associated with the possible inundation depth in meters. The second and third objectives were achieved through building a web application summarizing the most vulnerable areas statistics and thus reflecting species/categories at higher risk. The web application is published on an organization ArcGIS Online account, which can be accessed by other permitted organizations/entities. Through this technological approach stakeholders at different entities can have a brief insight on the vulnerability assessment results, to enable them to prioritize the areas at higher risks and develop an effective plan to save the city resources and increase the natural/built environment resilience to sea level rise risk.