Modelling Sea-Level Rise in the Lisbon city coastal area, using Free and Open Source Technologies

Sea-level rise is a consequence of global warming and is triggered by both,natural and man-made causes. The natural causes are mainly thermalexpansion of water and melting of glaciers due to increasing temperatures.Man-made causes are related with the human-induced greenhouse gases,which are intensifying the process. Coastal regions are severely affectedby the current tendency of sea-level rise, in the climate change context.These regions have also different land use and land cover, are denselypopulated, hence are considered particularly vulnerable. Researchers havebeen developing and working on scenarios regarding how much sea-levelwill rise and on its implications on coastal areas. This paper takes inconsideration different scenarios, based on literature, on sea-level rise inthe Portuguese coastal city of Lisbon, and measures the consequences ofsuch impacts in terms of affected area. The modelling for this study isbased on maximizing two scenarios regarding the following georeferenceddata: i) 2D vector buildings outlines data; ii) Digital Surface Model andDigital Terrain Model, obtained from LiDAR data with a resolution of1point/m2. Then, the focus will be given on the social impacts requiringother sources such as population, from census data. The objective ismodelling these scenarios based on a geoprocessing work-flow using theGRASS software environment. The outcomes concerning differentscenarios will be made available in open data formats, through WFS (WebFeature Source) on a WebGIS platform.