Coastal regions and societies are exposed to significant risks due to climate change and human activities. Extreme events such as storms, storm surges, heavy rainfall, flooding, and heatwaves - occurring individually or as compound events - pose major challenges for people living along the coast. These events occur across different spatial and temporal scales, and both the events themselves and their impacts are difficult to predict. Understanding these impacts and developing ways to address them is essential in order to ensure and strengthen the resilience and sustainability of coastal communities in dealing with marine-related natural hazards.
METAscales aims to strengthen the resilience of coastal communities. To achieve this goal, the project partners are working on the following key topics:
- The generation, validation, and analysis of climate data derived from computational models covering different spatial and temporal scales, in order to better assess future marine extreme events at the local level and to improve short-term forecasting.
- By comparing future marine extremes with historical data and current observations, changing risks for coastal regions will be identified, including their impacts on coastal communities, critical infrastructure, and land use.
- Changing impacts result in new adaptation needs for future extreme events - particularly in coastal and disaster risk management - as well as for higher-level policy decisions and management strategies aimed at risk reduction, which will be addressed within the project.
- Applicable and transferable strategies for the sustainable implementation of disaster risk management and early warning systems will be developed, tested, and participatively evaluated together with local communities in two coastal real-world "living laboratories".
- Transdisciplinary collaboration supports the establishment of a network of stakeholders, experts, and knowledge holders to jointly address these challenges.
To investigate the impacts of extreme events on coastal systems, state-of-the-art technologies and methods are employed. These include observation systems, oceanographic models, data analyses, and satellite image interpretation. Alternative coastal protection strategies, nature-based solutions, sediment management, spatial planning concepts, adaptive drainage concepts, as well as adapted disaster risk management and early warning strategies are jointly developed and integrated into comprehensive adaptation and coping strategies. The transdisciplinary approach combines close cooperation with coastal stakeholders and communities and incorporates interdisciplinary collaboration, ensuring that natural sciences, engineering, and social science perspectives interact constructively.
Project website:
https://www.marextreme.de/en/metascales
Project duration:
01 January 2024 – 31 December 2026
Project partners:
University of Kiel, Coastal Geology and Sedimentology Group
German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND), Bremen Regional Association
University of Hamburg, Integrative Geography
University of Würzburg, Institute of Geography and Geology
University of Hamburg, Institute of Oceanography, Climate Modeling Section
University of Stuttgart, Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning (IREUS)
Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR)
Braunschweig University of Technology, Leichtweiß Institute
Leibniz University of Hannover, Ludwig-Franzius-Institute
Lower Saxony State Agency for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation
Hamburg University of Technology
Lead partner:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörn Birkmann, University of Stuttgart, Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning (IREUS)
Funding agency:
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR)
Project management:
German Alliance for Marine Research (DAM)
Contact: