PEARL: Preparing for Extreme And Rare events in coastaL regions

Record disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes (or typhoons), tsunamis, widespread flooding and pollution, droughts, extremes of snowfalls and temperatures - all of which are associated with devastating losses and suffering - occur almost daily. Out of all natural disasters, floods in coastal regions are regarded as one of the most dangerous and harmful. According to the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) such floods have shown the fastest rate of increase relative to other types of disasters (see also CRED 2004 and CRED 2011). However, most of these events, although commonly referred to as natural disasters, are not in fact the results of nature-related processes
alone. They are to an ever increasing extent directly attributable to various social, economic, historical, political and even cultural issues. Rapid urbanization in coastal areas combined with climate change and poor governance can lead to a significant increase in the risk of local surface flooding (pluvial) coinciding with high water levels in rivers (fluvial) and high tide or storm surges from the sea (coastal) posing a greater risk of devastation in coastal communities.
A particularly important part of the management of complex problems such as disasters due to extreme hydro-meteorological events is to understand the hazards formation over a range of spatial and temporal scales. For these purpose state of the art science and technology are used for better comprehension of the extreme events formation in today¿s climate and future changing climate conditions.

记录的灾难，诸如地震、飓风（或台风）、海啸、普遍的洪水与污染、干旱、极端的降雪和气温等极端天气事件，这些事件均与巨大的损失和苦难密切相关，且几乎每日均有发生。在所有自然灾害中，沿海地区的洪水被视为最具危险性和危害性之一。根据国际灾害数据库（EM-DAT）的数据，此类洪水相对于其他类型灾害的增长速度最快（亦可参考CRED 2004和CRED 2011的相关研究）。然而，尽管这些事件通常被称作自然灾害，实际上并非完全由自然过程引起。随着社会、经济、历史、政治乃至文化因素的不断累积，它们的影响日益加剧。沿海地区的快速城市化，结合气候变化和不良的治理，可能导致地面洪水（雨洪）、河流高水位以及海潮或风暴潮的风险显著上升，从而对沿海社区造成更大的破坏风险。在极端水文气象事件引发的复杂问题管理中，一个至关重要的环节是理解灾害在多种空间和时间尺度上的形成机理。为此，利用最先进的科学技术手段，以更好地理解当前气候变化以及未来气候变化条件下极端事件的形成过程。