Coastal Flooding

Gisborne District Council (GDC) is required to identify areas in the coastal environment that are potentially affected by coastal hazards, over at least 100 years, as required by the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) (DoC 2010). In 2014 NIWA developed a Coastal Calculator to derive coastal-storm inundation elevations and likelihoods as a result of combinations of elevated storm-tide, wave setup and wave runup, along the coastline of Gisborne District (Stephens et al. 2014). The GDC subsequently commissioned NIWA to map areas potentially affected by large and rare coastal storm inundation events at locations for which topographic data of sufficient resolution were available: Poverty Bay; Wainui; Tolaga Bay; Tokomaru Bay; Anaura Bay; Hicks Bay and Te Araroa.