INSeaPTION

While future sea-level rise is recognized to be a major threat to coasts, sea-level rise related information currently available is not customized to the practice of coastal adaptation, which requires services tailored to users’ needs including full information on uncertainties, high-end estimates, accurate storm and flood modeling, shoreline change projections and relevant adaptation options within the context of current practices and governance arrangements. The INSeaPTION project aims at addressing these limitations by co-designing and co-developing, together with users, coastal climate services based on state-of-the art sea-level rise, impact, adaptation and transdisciplinary science. The project will deliver coastal climate services based on end-users' needs and their decision and governance context, covering the whole chain of climate service development from global to regional mean and extreme sea-level projections with their impacts and uncertainties to local sea-level, coastal impacts and adaptation pathways. As tropical islands are high impact sectors and currently receive little attention, we select Maldives and French Polynesia as pilot sites for local coastal climate services. Both global and local services address the committed impacts of sea-level rise and potential large adaptation needs arising in the case polar ice-sheets melt rapidly. INSeaPTION involves climate, impact and social scientists as well as practitioners of coastal adaptation, building on previous interactions between users and the project partners. The project’s transdiciplinary approach combines continuous interactions with users of both the global and local services to be developed with cutting edge sea-level, impact modeling, decision making and governance research. INSeaPTION contributes to the World Climate Research Programme Grand Challenge “Regional sea-level rise &coastal impacts” and to its objective to elaborate services in support to adaptation.