Managing climate change hazards in coastal areas: The Coastal Hazard Wheel decision support system

This manual aims to provide a complete guide to the use of the Coastal Hazard Wheel (CHW) for coastal decision-support and communication worldwide. The CHW is an information and decision-support system developed to address the challenges of natural hazard risk and climate change in coastal areas. It can be used for multi-hazard-assessments, for identification of relevant management options for a specific coastline and as a standardized coastal language to communicate coastal information. It can be applied in areas with limited data availability and technical capacity and can therefore be used in both developed and developing countries. Since the CHW incorporates climate change effects in the hazard evaluations, it is especially suited for climate change adaptation. Furthermore, it is suited for Disaster Risk Reduction under the Sendai Framework (UNISDR 2016) and can support Source-to-Sea governance.

The CHW is a universal coastal adaptation system to address all coastal challenges simultaneously. It can be used as a complete coastal language and aims to boost adaptation action at all levels and bridge the gap between scientists, policy-makers and the general public. The automated CHW App currently provides global coastal classification and adaptation information with moderate accuracy and will be continuously improved as various adaptation projects are implemented.