Risk communications for coastal inundation forecasting to the community

Abstract

Coastal inundation associated with tropical and extra tropical cyclones has a long history of causing death and destruction along our coastlines—and the threat has never been greater. It is imperative that the ever-increasing coastal public understands cyclone risk, particularly related to coastal inundation and storm surge. The potential for massive loss of life due to coastal inundation persists but there is very limited knowledge to generate information on coastal inundation due to cyclone. It provides a call to action for the national hydro-met services research and operations program to develop and implement new coastal inundation mitigation strategies. WMO, the Joint WMO-IOC Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) and the WMO Commission for Hydrology (CHy) have initiated the Coastal Inundation Forecasting Demonstration Project (CIFDP) and successfully implementing in many countries (i.e., Bangladesh, Fiji, Indonesia, China, etc.). Its purpose is to address the challenges faced by coastal communities to enhance their safety and to support sustainable development, through the improvement of coastal inundation forecasting and warning systems at the regional scale. Risk communication of coastal inundation is new and required to understand the community perceptions and preferences two categories of stakeholders: providers or experts (forecasters, broadcast meteorologists, and emergency managers) and users (public).