Estimating the economic cost of sea-level rise

(cont.) In the case of a classical linear sea-level rise of one meter per century, the use of DIVA generally decreases the protection fraction of the coastline, and results in a smaller protection cost because of high spatial concentration of capital. As in past studies, wetland loss continues to be dominant for most regions, and the total cost does not decline appreciably where wetland loss remains about the same. The total cost for the United States is about $320 billion (in 1995 U.S. dollars), an estimate comparable with other studies. Nevertheless, capital loss and protection cost may not be negligible for developing countries, in light of their small gross domestic product. Using realistic sea-level rise scenarios based on the Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) simulations substantially reduce the cost of sea-level rise for two reasons: a smaller rise of sea level in 2100 and a nonlinear form of the path of sea-level rise. As in many of the past studies, the thesis employs conventional but rather unrealistic assumptions: perfect information about future sea-level rise and neglect of the stochastic nature of storm surges. The author suggests that future work should tackle uncertain and stochastic sea-level rise damages.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Sugiyama, Masahiro

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Henry D. Jacoby.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38529

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38529