The Coclico project, whose purpose is to support decision-making on coastal risk management and adaptation to climate change, begins.

Last October, IHCantabria researchers, together with eighteen other partners, initiated the CoCliCo project, financed with European funds, whose purpose is to support decision-making on coastal risk management and adaptation to climate change.

To this end, an open source web platform will be developed that will provide information on present and future climate change flood and erosion risks on the coast, their main forcings, and the effect of the implementation of adaptation measures on them. The platform will combine layers of high-resolution geospatial information and will offer its users to visualize, explore and download multiple decision-oriented risk scenarios.

To address this challenge, CoCliCo brings together European organizations and academics with a proven track record in climate research, impact modeling, risk analysis and adaptation to large-scale climate change, as well as leading research and technologies in interoperable geospatial data management, decision sciences and risk communication.

IHCantabria in the project

Within the framework of the COCLICO project, IHCantabria is leading work package 3, which aims to advance knowledge of wave and sea level projections by compiling existing databases, developing new historical databases and multi-model projections, and analyzing changes in mean and extreme conditions. Regional projections of mean sea level will include contributions from land ice mass loss and land-based water storage, local dynamics and coastal morphology, climate model results for ocean thermal expansion, and dynamic ocean response and vertical land motion.

On the other hand, IHCantabria co-leads work package 4, whose objective is the design of a framework for integrated analysis of climate change impacts on the coast and the elaboration of flood and erosion projections for the European coastline. For this purpose, the databases of marine dynamics developed within the framework of the project, high-resolution topo-bathymetric information and process models will be used.

Context and objective

Rising sea levels due to climate change and coastal flooding are a real concern affecting millions of people across Europe. It not only has an impact on human health, but also on infrastructures and services, since many of the infrastructures are located near the coast or in low-lying areas.

Existing large-scale coastal climate services and platforms have successfully met the information and awareness needs for mitigating such risks. However, there is still a need for a decision-oriented platform for researchers and practitioners whose work and concern is the identification of coastal areas at risk of flooding, coastal land use planning and maintenance of coastal infrastructure services.

The main objective of the Coastal Climate Core Service (CoCliCo) project is to provide valid information to all researchers, professionals and experts to support decision making on coastal risk and adaptation, through an open web platform that delves into the dominant risk factors, adjusting visualization and analysis techniques to local decision contexts, and combining layers of high-resolution geospatial information.

The CoCliclo project will offer the possibility of visualizing different risk scenarios oriented to adaptation decision making, which will be a defining breakthrough for the case studies and demonstrations that address the needs raised above thanks to the forecasting of different time horizons and various climate change scenarios.