Modelling Projections of Potential Sea Level Rise Impacts on Some Caribbean Communities: Is it Worth the Effort?

SUMMARY The Caribbean historically experiences a variety of natural disasters including hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, droughts among other things. Climate change is reported to potentially exacerbate many of these extreme eve nts in the region, and add persistent sea level rise as another threat to Caribbean coastal c ommunities. GIS-based sea level rise predictive inundation models have been, and are bei ng, used to assess potential physical and socioeconomic impacts on coastal communities in the Caribbean and other geographic areas. The results of these models are expected to form pa rt of the information base used to develop appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies. T he veracity of the models’ results, and the usefulness of the models, are questioned because mo re often than not the models are constructed with less than ideal data, especially i n developing regions such as the Caribbean where there is often a paucity of long term dependa ble spatial data, including tidal data to determine mean sea level and, as well, coastal defo rmation data among other things. Within the context of all the foregoing, this paper presen ts three case studies where GIS-based sea level rise inundation models are produced relevant to selected Caribbean communities. It was found that the models have utility in raising aware ness, and support for the development of appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies.