TITLE:
Concepts and Misconceptions in Climate Change Risk Assessment: Considerations for Sea Level Rise and Extreme Precipitation Risk
AUTHORS:
Efthymia Koliokosta
KEYWORDS:
Risk Concept, Risk Misconceptions, Impact, Vulnerability, Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, Extreme Precipitation, Risk Assessment, Risk Ranking
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.13 No.1,
January
20,
2025
ABSTRACT: Flood extremes due to sea level rise and extreme precipitation are expected to increase in frequency and intensity. However, despite the need for accurate climate change risk assessment, significant misconceptions in key risk terms, including vulnerability and impact, could lead to risk miscalculations. These misconceptions around risk concepts derive from the lack of risk terms’ standardization and the gaps in an integrated and widely accepted methodology for assessing climate change risks. Risk assessment frameworks should follow the specialties of each element/sector it is applied on and the special features of each climate hazard. Also, risk assessment matrix should not follow specific design settings but it should better follow the needs of each study, so as to optimize the understanding of each risk. Through an extensive literature review, this is the first paper that identifies gaps, inconsistencies and misuses of climate risk concepts and suggests specific systemization and standardization of risk terms definitions. Finally, it develops a climate change risk assessment framework and matrix, focusing on sea level rise and extreme precipitation, which could be widely implemented in risk assessment of all elements at sea level rise and extreme precipitation risk.