Context
Due to the increase in coastal flooding risk associated with climate change, there is a strong need to develop efficient and long-term management strategies. In 2010, the storm Xynthia highlighted the limits of coastal flooding risk management in France. Besides a deficient alert system, it revealed a lack of risk culture. This problem was especially prevalent among local decision-makers who fail to take into account alternative prevention measures and adaptive strategies. In partnership with the local administration of Oléron Island – a sector strongly affected by storm Xynthia - we developed a participatory simulation model to foster social learning about coastal risk prevention measures with local authorities and managers.
Our Conceptual Framework
This simulation integrates a coastal flooding simulation model and a spatially explicit agent-based model that simulates the development of the area and the management of prevention measures. The participatory set-up was made to create an immersive environment so that participants would remember the coastal flooding simulation displayed.
A role game mechanism was added in order to simulate the coordination issues between the different decision bodies and levels involved in coastal risk management. Participants’ interfaces were designed to reflect on the opposition between a short term strategy (building more dikes) and a long-term strategy (land-use and housing adaptation).
It proved to be very immersive thanks to the combination of displaying coastal flooding simulations on a very large screen and of using distributed user-control interfaces. Participants learned about the water expansion dynamics during flood events and the effects of building, raising and restoring dikes. Yet, the model still needs improvements to help decision-makers change their mindset on long-term alternative risk prevention measures.
Technical acknowledgement
GAMA-platform
We use gama-platforme to develop all social mechanism. GAMA is a modeling and simulation development environment for building spatially explicit agent-based simulations.
ListFlood
Legal Notice
Authors and Contributors
coordination by : Nicolas Becu (@nbecu)
Authors in alphabetical order : Brice Anselme, Marion Amalric, Elise Beck , Nicolas Becu, Xavier Bertin , Etienne Delay (@ElCep) , Nathalie Long, Corinne Manson, Nicolas Marilleau, Cécilia Pignon-Mussaud et Frédéric Rousseaux
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Support or Contact
if you are looking for information on our project please contact us
Scientific communication around LittoSim
- Becu, Nicolas, Marion Amalric, Brice Anselme, Elise Beck, Xavier Bertin, Etienne Delay, Nathalie Long, et al. “Participatory Simulation of Coastal Flooding: Building Social Learning on Prevention Measures with Decision-Makers.” International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, 2016.