Damage from Hurricane Sandy in Union Beach, New JerseyFLICKR, WAVIANThe ongoing devastation from Hurricane Harvey sadly reminds us of the risks of coastal living. We feel deeply for the communities in Harvey’s path. One of us (Sid Narayan) hails from a coastal city in south India that has seen its fair share of tragedy too, from annual cyclones to the 2004 Asian tsunami. Sid has spent his career as a coastal engineer trying to design solutions to reduce those risks. He has carved a niche as one of the small but growing number of engineers helping to show where natural solutions can contribute cost effectively to risk reduction. As a coastal ecologist, the other author (Mike Beck) has had to run from storms too, including once abandoning his boat and broken trailer in a swampy, roadside ditch in the Florida panhandle.
Over the past four years, our team has had the opportunity to look beyond coastal biodiversity and to work closely with the insurance sector to evaluate the benefits of coastal wetlands for flood risk reduction. With support from Lloyd’s of London and collaborators from RMS and Guy Carpenter and Company, we used the risk industry’s high-resolution flood models and extensive property-loss data to show that wetlands play a critical role in reducing risks from storms in the northeast United States.
Habitat restoration could pay for itself in savings.
In Scientific Reports today (August 31), we report from these industry models that during Hurricane Sandy marshes prevented USD$625 million in direct flood damages across 12 states, and reduced flood levels along several hundreds of kilometers of ...
