An instructural system model of coastal management to the water related hazards in China

Coastal lowlands have large areas of hazard impact and relatively low capacity of prevention to the water related hazards, which have been indicated by the wide-spread flood hazards, high percentages of land with high flood vulnerability. Increasing propulation pressure and the shift of resources exploitation from land to sea will force more and more coastal lowlands to be developed in the future, further enhancing the danger of water-related hazards. In this paper, the coastal lowlands in the northern Jiangsu province, China, were selected as a case study. The Interpretation Structural Model (ISM) was employed to analyze the direct and indirect impacts among the elements within the system, and thereby, to identify the causal elements, middle linkages, their expression, and relations.