Interdisciplinary Workshop on Sea-Level Rise, Hazards and Adaptation in The Netherlands

7th of June, Utrecht, Netherlands

About

Adaptation to sea-level rise in The Netherlands and elsewhere is hampered by the large uncertainties of sea-Level rise, its impacts and possible adaptation measures. While sea-level rise is a highly interdisciplinary problem, we observe that scientists typically still approach the uncertainties of sea-level rise from a monodisciplinary perspective. By bringing together a scientists from different disciplines and policymakers for this workshop, we aim to promote a more interdisciplinary perspective on the uncertainties of adaptating to the impacts of sea-level rise and stimulate information exchange between researchers and other experts working on different aspects of sea-level rise.

Experts from three different disciplines were invited to participate in the workshop: (1) sea-level projections, including the underlying processes; (2) the hazards and impacts of sea-level rise; and (3) adaptation to sea-level rise (for a list of the participants, see the PDF document linked to below). After a series of short introductory presentations, participants were split up into break-out groups. In the first break-out group, participants discussed the main research questions and uncertainties surrounding sea-level rise in the Netherlands within their own discipline. In a second break-out group, participants were mixed and discussed the (mis)alignment of the need for and feasibility of uncertainty reductions between disciplines. During the second half of the day, participants discussed writing a collaborative perspective paper and explored future opportunities for interdisciplinary community building.

An important conclusion from the workshop is that major uncertainties in each of the sea-level rise, hazards & impacts and adaptation disciplines are unlikely to be substantially reduced in the near future, while adaptation decisions will have to be made. This implies an important role for early warning signals, scenarios of sea-level rise conditional upon these signals and corresponding action perspectives for adaptation, which could help to navigate through this uncertain future. To develop early warning & response systems, the type of interdisciplinary collaboration that our workshop promoted is strongly needed. These and other conclusions of the workshop will be written up in a perspective paper soon. Curious? Stay tuned!

Information

Contact

The workshop is organized by Tim Hermans (UU), Renske de Winter (Deltares), Joep Storms (TU Delft) and Frances Dunn (UU). For questions, please direct your email to: t.h.j.hermans @ uu.nl .

Location

Boothzaal
Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht Science Park
Heidelberglaan 3, 3584 CS Utrecht
Postbus 80124, 3508 TC Utrecht

Funding

This workshop is sponsored by the Dutch Polar Program project DP4C.

Program and participants

A pdf-file with the program can be downloaded HERE, and a list of participants HERE.

Photos of the workshop

Participant group


Break-out discussion