Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surges: New Data on 500 Cities

In April 2009, I blogged on a paper co-authored with David Wheeler (Center for Global Development) on the impact of sea-level rise and storm surges in developing countries. David has extended this work further to include the potential future impact of sea-level rise for more than 500 cities, given changes in population. The results are stunning, and show a huge potential impact concentration in a few hot-spot cities. 

This enhanced paper is available on the Center for Global Development website with a spreadsheet that provides impact estimates for hundreds of developing-country cities.  The data collection was quite an intensive task, and we hope that it will make urban planners take storm surges into consideration in infrastructure projects.