Birgit Gerkensmeier on multi-hazard risk in the Wadden Sea
In a video interview, Birgit Gerkensmeier of Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht explained why risk management on the Wadden Sea coast should cover demographic change as well as storm surges.
Birgit Gerkensmeier was a member of the Department Human Dimensions of Coastal Areas at the Institute of Coastal Research of Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG) and a PhD student at the University of Hamburg. In ENHANCE she worked on the North Sea and Wadden Sea storm surge case study, assessing whether a transnational multi-sector partnership was possible in the trilateral Wadden Sea region, where the case study compared Dutch and German approaches to coastal risk.
Her video interview carried one main message. Risk management in the Wadden Sea region should be treated as a multi-hazard task. Storm surges are the obvious threat on this coast, but she argued that slower changes, such as demographic change in coastal communities, belong in the same frame as the surges themselves, and that a partnership covering only one hazard would miss how they interact.
The point fits the case study’s wider findings. Since 1962 no one had died in a North Sea storm surge, thanks to heavy investment in coastal protection, while stronger storms and sea-level rise raised the question of how the region’s institutions would manage risk under climate change. The Wadden Sea Forum, a partner in the case, later decided to add climate change impacts to its partnership work, an outcome reported in the ENHANCE book announcement.
The case study is described in the North Sea and Wadden Sea record. Other ENHANCE cases are listed in the case-study atlas.