A Decision Support Framework for the Risk Assessment of Coastal Erosion in the Yangtze Delta

Coastal erosion is an issue of widespread concern and the Yangtze Delta is one of the most important economic regions in China, has been showing a trend towards such erosion. Possible influences are global warming in the form of sea level rise and the increasing human activities in the catchment and its estuary. Most Current studies on coastal erosion in this region have focused on the causes and types of erosion. This paper presents a Decision Support Framework (DSF) to estimate the likelihood and possible degree of coastal erosion in the coastal zone of the Yangtze Delta. The framework also enables consideration of the potential management problems and economic development challenges. It has four major components: an integrated database, GIS-based risk assessment models, scenario generator and a visualization toolkit. Specific focus is on the development of a GIS-based risk assessment model for the muddy coasts of the Yangtze Delta. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to weight the variables of the model, such as coastal elevation, coastal slope, et al. The assessment results show the validity of the approach. The DSF will make relevant specialized data and information more accessible to managers, and has an extensive capability to facilitate communication and subsequent synergetic work between man and computers.