AN AGENT-BASED MODEL TO EVALUATE HOUSING DYNAMICS OF COASTAL COMMUNITIES FACING STORMS AND SEA LEVEL RISE
ICCE 2016 Cover Image
PDF

Keywords

XBeach
coupled human-natural system modeling
community attractiveness
climate change
Nags Head

How to Cite

Karanci, A., Berglund, E., & Overton, M. (2017). AN AGENT-BASED MODEL TO EVALUATE HOUSING DYNAMICS OF COASTAL COMMUNITIES FACING STORMS AND SEA LEVEL RISE. Coastal Engineering Proceedings, 1(35), management.23. https://doi.org/10.9753/icce.v35.management.23

Abstract

An agent-based model (ABM) is developed to explore the effects of storms and sea level rise (SLR) on soft-engineered coastal management actions and households' housing decisions at the coastal town of Nags Head in North Carolina, USA. The ABM links the behavior of household agents (individual homeowners) and town agents (coastal managers) with morphological coastal evolution caused by long-term erosion, sea level rise, and storms. Storm impacts are determined by combining the process-based model XBeach (Roelvink, 2009) outputs with the ABM framework. The integrated ABM framework is applied to simulate occupation dynamics and community viability under forcing from storms and sea level rise over a time frame of 50 years. A timeline with storm events was created using historical data and the intensity of the storm in the midpoint of the timeline was varied to explore the effect of storm intensity on the community. Simulations demonstrated a strong link between the intensity of storms and household occupancy. Results suggest that increased storm intensity hinders development and in some cases can cause community occupation growth to stagnate or decline. The results also indicate a feedback loop between the natural processes, management decisions, and household decisions. After a severe storm, buildings are damaged, expenses are increased, and occupation declines. A diminished community cannot invest in protection measures and in turn becomes more vulnerable to future storms. A tipping point may occur, where the community stagnates with respect to its household occupation. To investigate the influence of varying sea level rise rates on community occupancy dynamics, the model was forced with different sea level rise scenarios, including no sea level rise, a constant rate of sea level rise, and two scenarios with accelerated sea level rise. The scenario with no sea level rise showed a considerably more attractive community than the scenarios with sea level rise. This was attributed to (1) absence of expenses incurred in other scenarios to mitigate recession caused by sea level rise and (2) lower flooding risk.
https://doi.org/10.9753/icce.v35.management.23
PDF

References

Bruun P. 1962. Sea-level rise as a cause of shore erosion. Journal of the Waterways and Harbors Division, American Society Civil Engineers Proceedings, 88, 117-130.

Church J. A., P. U. Clark, A. Cazenave, J. M. Gregory, S. Jevrejeva, A. Levermann, M. A. Merrifield, G. A. Milne, R. S. Nerem, and P. D. Nunn. 2013. Sea level change. In T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G. K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. K. Allen, A. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, and P. M. Midgley, editors. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Coastal Science and Engineering.2012. 2011 Nags Head Beach Nourishment Project, Nags Head North Carolina. Columbia, SC: Coastal Science and Engineering.

De Waard J. 2016. Quantifying the impacts of climate-driven flood risk changes and risk perception biases on coastal urban property values. University of Twente, Masters Thesis.

Dorsch W., T. Newland, D. Tassone, S. Tymons, and D. Walker. 2008. A statistical approach to modelling the temporal patterns of ocean storms. Journal of Coastal Research, 1430-1438.

Emanuel K. 2005. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature, 436, 686-688.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. Flood Insurance Study: A report of flood hazards in Dare County, North Carolina and incorporated areas. Atlanta, GA, USA: Federal Emergency Agency; 2006.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. Policy Rates. Retrieved 08/21, 2016, from https://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/residential_coverage/policy_rates.

Federal Housing Administration (FHA). 2014. Average Interest Rates for FHA-Insured 30-yr Fixed Rate One Living Unit Home Mortgages. Retrieved May, 1, 2016, from http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=fharates_current.pdf

Filatova T., A. Voinov, and A. Van Der Veen. 2011. Land market mechanisms for preservation of space for coastal ecosystems: an agent-based analysis. Environmental Modelling & Software, 26, 179-190.

Franck T.R. 2009. Coastal communities and climate change: a dynamic model of risk perception, storms and adaptation. PhD Dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2009.

Fujita M. 1989. Urban economic theory: land use and city size. Cambridge university press, Cambridge.

GÅda Y. 2010. Random seas and design of maritime structures. World scientific, Singapore.

Haar M. 1998. Random.org. Retrieved August, 15, 2016, from http://random.org/

Hardin E., M. O. Kurum, H. Mitasova, and M. F. Overton. 2012. Least cost path extraction of topographic features for storm impact scale mapping. Journal of Coastal Research, 28,970-978.

Holman R. 1986. Extreme value statistics for wave run-up on a natural beach. Coastal Engineering, 9,527-544.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2013. Fifth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis.

Kaczkowski H. L., T. W. Kana. 2012. Final design of the Nags Head beach nourishment project using a longshore numerical model. Coastal Engineering Proceedings, 1,64.

Kana, T., Kaczkowski,H. 2012. Planning, preliminary design, and initial performance of the Nags Head beach nourishment project. Coastal Engineering Proceedings, 1.

Karanci A., L. Velasquez-Montoya, J. Paniagua-Arroyave, P. N. Adams, and M.F. Overton. in press. beach management practices and occupation dynamics: an agent-based modeling study for the coastal town of Nags Head, NC, USA. In Beach Management Tools, Springer.

Longuet-Higgins M. S. 1952. On the statistical distribution of the heights of sea waves. Journal of Marine Research, 11-3, 245-263.

McInnes K., K. Walsh, G. Hubbert, and T. Beer. 2003. Impact of sea-level rise and storm surges on a coastal community. Natural Hazards, 30, 187-207.

McNamara D. E., S. Gopalakrishnan, M. D. Smith, and A. B. Murray. 2015. Climate adaptation and policy-induced inflation of coastal property value. PloS one, 10.

Murray B. A., S. Gopalakrishnan, D. E. McNamara, and M. D. Smith. 2013. Progress in coupling models of human and coastal landscape change. Computers & Geosciences, 53, 30-38.

North Carolina Department of Environment and Resources (NCDENR). 2012. North Carolina 2011 Long-Term Average Annual Oceanfront Erosion Rates. Raleigh, NC, USA: N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources - Division of Coastal Management.

North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program (NCFMP). 2006. North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program. http://www.ncfloodmaps.com

North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission Science Panel. 2015. North Carolina sea level rise assesment report 2015.

Overton M., R. Grenier Jr, E. Judge, and J. Fisher. 1999. Identification and analysis of coastal erosion hazard areas: Dare and Brunswick Counties, North Carolina. Journal of Coastal Research, 69-84.

Putra H. C., H. Zhang, and C. Andrews. 2015. Modeling real estate market responses to climate change in the coastal zone. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 18, 18.

Railsback S. F., V. Grimm. 2011. Agent-based and individual-based modeling: a practical introduction. Princeton university press.

Roelvink D., A. Reniers, A. van Dongeren, J. van Thiel de Vries, R. McCall, and J. Lescinski. 2009. Modelling storm impacts on beaches, dunes and barrier islands. Coastal Engineering 56, 1133-1152.

Smith M. D., J. M. Slott, D. McNamara, and A. B. Murray. 2009. Beach nourishment as a dynamic capital accumulation problem. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 58, 58-71.

Splinter K. D., M. L. Palmsten. 2012. Modeling dune response to an East Coast Low. Marine Geology, 329, 46-57.

U.S. Census Bureau.2010. Profile of general population and housing characteristics: Nags Head Town, NC.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. Profile of general demographic characters: Nags Head Town, NC.

U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD). 2016. Buying a Home. Looking for the best mortgage.

Van Dongeren, A., A. Bolle, M.I. Vousdoukas, T. Plomaritis, P. Eftimova, J. Williams, C. Armaroli, D. Idier, P. Van Geer, and J. Van Thiel de Vries. 2009. MICORE: dune erosion and overwash model validation with data from nine European field sites. Proceedings of coastal dynamics.

Wilensky U. 1999. NetLogo. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Wu S., J. Yang, and Y. Tung. 2006. Identification and stochastic generation of representative rainfall temporal patterns in Hong Kong territory. Stochastic environmental research and risk assessment, 20, 171-183.

Zevenbergen L.W., Lagasse P.F., Edge B.L. Tidal hydrology, hydraulics and scour at bridges. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration; 2004. Report nr FHWA NHI_ HEC-25.

Authors retain copyright and grant the Proceedings right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Proceedings.