Identifying Urban Factors Affecting Resilience Strategies to ...

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Abstract

Resilience is defined as the ability to predict, prepare for, and adapt to every condition change and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from any disruptions. One of these upcoming changing conditions is sea-level rise in coastal cities with its severe impacts regarding coastal erosion. This dramatic environmental issue necessitates adaptation strategies for waterfront areas to be prepared for the future. Such strategies will help stakeholders to identify vulnerabilities, assess environmental and health risks of disasters. and track progress in improving recovery capacity. The research will focus on the northern wetland of Egypt. as it constitutes about one quarter of the wetland of the Mediterranean region. Port Said governorate will be the case study, as Port Said hosts Egypt’s second largest harbor. Port Said Governorate is the most physically and socio-economically vulnerable area in the region and will be seriously threatened by sea-level rise as most of its land is low-lying. Several models predict an accelerated sea-level rise after 2040 to 2050 in response to increased melting of the West Antarctic ice shelf. The most expected serious impacts of this sea-level rise is the threat to recreational beach communities as well as to other activities in the coastal zone. This article presents four strategies for sea-level rise adaptation: protection, accommodation, retreat, and attack. A comparative analysis will be constructed for these strategies with respect to the governorate coastal zones to state the most efficient for each zone’s conditions/constraints. Coastal development phasing will be introduced, addressing design guidelines to achieve these resilient strategies for urban development in Port Said city.