Water Qual Expo Health DOI 10.1007/s12403-013-0099-x Modeling Spatial Variations of Sea Level Rise and Corresponding Inundation Impacts: A Case Study for Florida, USA Biao Chang · Jiabao Guan · Mustafa M. Aral Received: 15 July 2013 / Revised: 26 September 2013 / Accepted: 1 October 2013 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract As the human society is facing potentially signif- icant environmental impacts due to climate change, accurate impact assessments of sea level rise (SLR) are also critically needed. In this study, to conduct reliable SLR projection and inundation assessment, an integrated modeling framework is proposed and the application of this methodology is demon- strated for the State of Florida, USA. This framework uti- lizes a dynamic system model (DSM) with spatial analysis capability to predict the regional sea level change. The DSM projections are then used for geographic information system (GIS) based inundation analysis. Results show that the pro- posed methodology provides reliable inundation assessment for the likely scenario of spatially variable SLR over the 21st century and can be utilized in other coastal regions of the world to aid management decision in a timely manner. Keywords Climate change · Sea level rise · Spatial variations · Inundation assessment · Geographic information system (GIS) Introduction Climate change has become an important concern with mul- tiple adverse effects that influence many regions of the world including population dynamics analysis (Aral 2013). One important consequence of climate change is sea level rise (SLR), which is drawing increasing attention in the techni- cal literature as well as news media. SLR can cause saltwater B. Chang (B ) · J. Guan · M.M. Aral Multimedia Environmental Simulations Laboratory, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA e-mail: bchang1983@gmail.com intrusion, beach erosion, and inundation of low lying coastal areas (Meehl et al. 2007). As 23 % of the world’s popula- tion live within 100 km from the coast and less than 100 m above sea level (Nicholls et al. 2007), accurate impact as- sessments of potential SLR are critically needed worldwide. In these assessments temporal documentation of the impact is as important as the spatial documentation for appropriate managerial decisions to be made in a timely manner. A host of studies have analyzed the inundation im- pacts of potential SLR at global, regional, and local scales. Li et al. (2009) developed geographic information system (GIS) methods to assess inundation impacts of a hypothet- ical global SLR of one to six meters, and estimated that the inundated area would be between 1.055 (for one meter) and 2.193 (for six meters) million square kilometers. Das- gupta et al. (2009) also used GIS methods to identify inun- dation zones for 84 coastal regions of developing countries under projected SLR of 1–5 meters. Assessments of inun- dation caused by SLR have been conducted for various re- gions, including New Jersey, US (Cooper et al. 2008), South Florida, US (Zhang 2011), the Florida Keys, US (Zhang et al. 2011), and the Chinese coast (Yin et al. 2012). Stud- ies have also quantified inundation areas under potential scenarios of SLR at a local scale, with target locations at metropolitan areas that include Maui, Hawaii (US) (Cooper et al. 2013), New York City (US) (Gornitz et al. 2002), Satel- lite Beach City, Florida (US) (Parkinson and McCue 2011), Collaroy/Narrabeen Beach, Sydney (Australia) (Hennecke et al. 2004), and the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa (Israel) (Lichter and Felsenstein 2012). Despite the large number of studies on inundation impact assessment of potential SLR, issues still exist in the method- ologies that are used in these studies. Hypothetical magni- tudes of SLR are commonly used to calculate the severity of inundation in some studies (Dasgupta et al. 2009; Li et al.