An accurate storm surge prediction is of paramount importance for the countries which experience huge loss of life and damage to the property due to the storm surge. Scientific information plays an important role in mitigating the coastal disasters caused by the severe cyclonic storms and preparing for the potential threats due to storm surges. Over decades, a great stride has been made in monitoring, modeling, and managing the storm surge, but the uncertainty still remains in predicting the storm surge for short and long term period as well as in managing the risk and making a decision.

This session aims to explore the major sources of uncertainty, global as well as regional, which deal with the driving atmospheric forcing, the parameterization of physical processes, the wave-wind-tide-surge interactions, the coastal flooding due to the wave setup, the risk management and decision strategy, limitations of operational forecast, and impacts of sea level rise and climate change on storm surges. This session will provide an opportunity to operational forecasters, research scientists, and disaster managers to raise various issues related to storm surge research, forecasting and risk management areas and to address them with the current state-of-the-art technology.

Papers in this theme might address:
- Information needs of coastal stakeholders
- Defining the bottom line – reference water levels and current and future flood protection
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Current capacity of modelling, predictions, and forecasting
- Expected level of future (5-10 years horizon) modelling, forecasting and projections
- Knowledge gaps, e.g. hydrodynamics and bathymetry
- The role of remote sensing
- Scenarios of future tropical and extra tropical storminess
- Scenarios of sea level rise
- Vulnerability and risk assessment
- The role of managed realignment
- Usage of scenarios for adaptation and planning
- Calculation of the design level