Areas in the Gisborne district potentially affected by coastal storm inundation. Gisborne District Council (GDC) is required to identify areas in the coastal environment that are
potentially affected by coastal hazards, over at least 100 years, as required by the New Zealand
Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) (DoC 2010).
In 2014 NIWA developed a Coastal Calculator to derive coastal-storm inundation elevations and
likelihoods as a result of combinations of elevated storm-tide, wave setup and wave runup, along the
coastline of Gisborne District (Stephens et al. 2014). The GDC subsequently commissioned NIWA to map areas potentially affected by large and rare coastal storm
inundation events at locations for which topographic data of sufficient resolution were
available: Poverty Bay; Wainui; Tolaga Bay; Tokomaru Bay; Anaura Bay; Hicks Bay and Te Araroa.