Vulnerability to coastal flood hazard of residential buildings on Noirmoutier Island (France)

Abstract

Storm Xynthia was responsible for the death of 41 people by drowning after the flooding by the sea of low-lying areas along French Atlantic coast in February 2010. This toll was partly explained by inadequacy of houses to flood hazard: 78% of the deaths occur in single-storey constructions.

In this paper, we propose a map linking architectural typology of constructions with potential water depth in case of coastal flood event. The goal is to identify residential houses which present a high level of vulnerability for people to a potential coastal flood event. This work is presented on Noirmoutier Island which was few impacted by Storm Xynthia. However, it presents some common points with the most hit territories during the storm: 70% of the territory is under Xynthia level; 65% of the houses located in this low-lying area are single-storey constructions

This map shows us different vulnerability between the four towns of the island.

Keywords:

• Storm Xynthia
• Noirmoutier Island
• coastal flood risk
• vulnerability
• building vulnerability assessment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Martin Paillart and Fanny Collier from the Communauté de Communes de l’Île de Noirmoutier (CCIN) for all their help. We would also like to thank all the PhD students who assisted in the collection of data in the field. We acknowledge the support of the COSELMAR research program, funded by Région Pays de la Loire, and the LETG Nantes-Géolittomer, UMR 6554 CNRS for its daily support. We also like to thank Carol Robins for his attentive re-reading. Finally, we would like to thank warmly the three reviewers for their useful comments which contribute to the improvement of this work.

Software

Esri Arc Gis 10.1 was used for data analysis with the final map drafted using Adobe Illustration CS4.

ORCID

Axel Creach http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6444-735X