Evaluating the effectiveness of land-use policies in preventing the risk of coastal flooding

Abstract

Today, urban environments face several wicked environmental problems. These problems respond to institutional and political approaches instead of technical solutions. Rising sea levels, for instance, put waterfront areas at risk of coastal flooding. To minimize this risk land-use regulations can be effective. Although many strategies have been developed for managing wicked problems, few efforts have focused on evaluating the effectiveness of land-use policies in regulating wicked environmental problems.

This study develops a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of land-use policies in preventing sea flood risks. The study area covers the coastal regions of Helsinki and Espoo, and the timeframe of this evaluation expands from 2000 to 2018. Through the developed framework, land-use scenarios are simulated based on specific values, which reflect the effects of a policy set. This framework can be adapted to assess the effectiveness of land-use policies on different land-use conversions. The data used to conduct this research include the CORINE land-use cover dataset and the sea flood risk dataset provided by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), international land-use planning and regulation guidelines, national legislation, and other relevant documents. Furthermore, land-use simulations were generated by GeoSOS-FLUS software. According to the results, fewer vulnerable land-use types are located within the sea flood risk zones in 2018 compared to 2000. This demonstrates positive land-use planning performance in the target areas. This simulation also shows a strong similarity to actual land use in 2018, proving the framework's reliability.