Integrating AI and climate change scenarios for multi-risk assessment in the coastal municipalities of the Veneto region

Global climate is experiencing exceptional warming, leading to a rise in extreme events worldwide. Coastal regions are particularly vulnerable to climate change (CC), due to dense populations, interconnected economies, and fragile ecosystems. These areas face escalating risks as CC intensifies the severity and frequency of extreme weather phenomena, like heavy precipitation, sea-level rise (SLR), storm surges.
Integrated approaches are crucial to assess the combined impacts of atmospheric and marine hazards at the land-sea interface. Machine Learning (ML) offer innovative solutions to analyse multi-risk events, leveraging large and heterogeneous datasets and modelling complex, non-linear interactions.
This study introduces a two-tier ML approach to estimate risks associated with extreme weather events for the Veneto coastal municipalities under current and future scenarios. The model, tested and validated with present-day data, showed satisfactory performance (error margin ∼20 %). The model was applied to mid-term (until 2045) and long-term (until 2100) periods under different CC scenarios, represented by various Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). Mid-term analysis reveals an increasing risk trend, driven by SLR under RCP8.5, underscoring the significance of considering non-linear interactions between multiple marine and atmospheric hazards. Long-term analysis highlights how future risks depend mainly on precipitation and SLR across the analysed CC scenarios (RCP2.6/4.5/8.5). Results indicate a gradual increase in the expected annual risk trend, with RCP8.5 scenario showing the most severe outcomes. By 2100, the risks under RCP8.5 are projected to be ten times higher than those observed during the historical period, highlighting the importance of developing effective strategies to address these challenges.