Hazard and Risk Dashboard

In collaboration with the Pacific Community (SPC), this state-of-the-art online platform allows the atoll nation to clearly identify, plan for, and reduce risks associated with sea level rise and more frequent intense storms driven by climate change. The free, publicly available platform enables the government, communities and other users to make sound, risk-informed development decisions including where to build, as well as a crucial tool to plan adaptation into the future.

Land is an extremely precious resource for an atoll nation like Tuvalu, which has only approximately 25 square kilometres in total across its nine atolls, much of it less than one metre above spring tide levels. The islands are seldom more than a few hundred metres across, often far less. Understanding how shorelines are changing, and the risks of inundation, is crucial to the country’s climate change adaptation response.

Comprising several tools in one dashboard, the platform covers all nine of Tuvalu’s atolls and islands. It includes inundation modelling due to sea level rise and storm waves, shoreline change detection and monitoring, damage and loss, and tools to identify marine hazards exposure.

The platform can be viewed in full here. 

LiDAR in Tuvalu

Crucial to SPC’s development of the platform has been the acquisition of the national Lidar baseline survey completed under TCAP in 2019. In addition, the platform incorporates tens of thousands of storm wave simulations generated through variables such as storm size + storm direction + tide + storm surge + sea level. This allows users to also look at a location’s inundation risk in relation to a storm threatening landfall.

Actual storm wave inundation modelling on Tuvalu’s islands is very complex because shores in Tuvalu are ringed by living reef platforms and fringes. To help understand inundation potential in these unique environments, physical modelling was conducted at the University of New South Wales, Manly Hydraulics Laboratory, Australia. In these experiments, scale models of some islands were accurately reproduced with scaled waves generated to show true wave impacts. The results were used to calibrate and train the subsequent computer simulations, and also to guide TCAP’s adaptation designs for Nanumea and Nanumaga.

With a few clicks, anyone can now zoom into a specific location on high resolution aerial imagery of any island in Tuvalu and investigate varying scenarios of potential inundation. Expert users are also able to access data sets and refer to a detailed methods guide which explains the data, assumptions, and methods underlying the modelling.