European coastal lowlands most vulnerable to sea level rise

Methodology

The lowland was extracted from a global digital elevation model (DEM)/ digital terrain elevation model compiled by EEA and derived from the GTOPO30 dataset from U.S. Geological Survey. Detailed methodology information is available in the word document below. Assessing the results it should be taken into account that very narrow strips of coastal lowland is likely not to be included in the analysis. This entails that greater areas of lowland might be overestimated compared to narrow lowland areas in Europe. It should also be considered that the lowland results are more accurate in flat areas rather than in steeper areas of Europe. This is due to the calculation of the DEM.