Abstract
To assess coastal storm risks this paper compares existing hazards, associated risks, coastal management plans, and civil protection schemes from nine European countries. An evaluation made of specific study sites concludes that: (a) the definition of coastal hazard or risk varies between countries, regions and sites with no pan-European agreement; (b) existing risk definitions for northern Europe are based on probabilistic approaches and integrate threats to human occupation; this approach is not adopted in southern and eastern European countries; (c) half of the evaluated coastal management plans have a scientific basis with the remainder adopting qualitative or semi-quantitative approaches; (d) strategic approaches, used to define areas of potential occupation, coastal defences etc. are the most common; (e) operational approaches used for major event prediction and response are poorly developed. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate existing best practices in Europe in order to develop standardised coastal risk management for all EU member states.