Elsner, A., Mai, S., Zimmermann, C.. Risikoanalyse - ein Element des Küstenzonenmanagements. In: Schernewski, G., Dolch, T. (eds.). Geographie der Meere und Küsten. Coastline Reports (1), pp. 137-147. 2004.

Accelerated sea level rise as a result of the climate change leads to an increasing stress on coastal defence systems and therefore to a higher risk to coastal zones due to the higher failure probability of defence systems. This requires an adjustment to ensure today's and future utilisation of the hinterland. To reduce the costs of this adjustment coastal defence planning should be integrated into the management of the hinterland. Probabilistic risk analysis which combines failure probability of coastal defence systems and expected loss in the hinterland in case of flooding is a suitable technique. Within this concept risk is defined as the product of the probability of failure of the defence system and its consequences, e.g. the expected loss. Applying this definition densely populated and economically valuable urban areas require a higher standard of safety than rural areas. Apart from strengthening exiting coastal defence systems a strategy of adaptation introducing secondary defence lines is possible. Both coastal defence strategies are analysed for the community of Wangerland north of Wilhelmshaven. It is shown that today´s system fails with a probability of 1/2500. A rise in water level of 55 cm increases the annual failure probability to approx. 1/500. In case of a dike breach near Minsen the loss, calculated using GIS in order to combine the results of numerical modelling of the flooding and the assets, amounts to 60 million Euro. Today´s risk of the coastal zone increases by a factor of 5 in case of the sea level rise.