A systematic review of dynamics in climate risk and vulnerability assessments

Abstract

Understanding climate risk is crucial for effective adaptation action, and a number of assessment methodologies have emerged. We argue that the dynamics of the individual components in climate risk and vulnerability assessments has received little attention. In order to highlight this, we systematically reviewed 42 sub-national climate risk and vulnerability assessments. We analysed the assessments using an analytical framework with which we evaluated (1) the conceptual approaches to vulnerability and exposure used, (2) if current or future risks were assessed, and (3) if and how changes over time (i.e. dynamics) were considered. Of the reviewed assessments, over half addressed future risks or vulnerability; and of these future-oriented studies, less than 1/3 considered both vulnerability and exposure dynamics. While the number of studies that include dynamics is growing, and while all studies included socio-economic aspects, often only biophysical dynamics was taken into account. We discuss the challenges of assessing socioeconomic and spatial dynamics, particularly the poor availability of data and methods. We suggest that future-oriented studies assessing risk dynamics would benefit from larger stakeholder involvement, discussion of the assessment purpose, the use of multiple methods, inclusion of uncertainty/sensitivity analyses and pathway approaches.

Social vulnerability projections improve sea-level rise risk assessments

“…By 2060, as much as 12% of the global population-1.4 billion people-could live in the low elevation coastal zone, many with the sustainability of their livelihoods linked to coastal environments (Neumann et al 2015). Under equal exposure to climate change hazards, however, the vulnerability of some coastal sub-populations will be much greater due to differences in their socio-economic characteristics (Gaillard et al 2014;Shepherd and KC 2015;Jurgilevich et al 2017;Lutz and Muttarak 2017;Otto et al 2017). Numerous case studies support the connections between increased vulnerability to environmental hazards and multiple socio-economic characteristics including non-white racial and non-Hispanic ethnic groups, women, people with low educational attainment or living in poverty, and both the young and elderly, as well as many other socio-economic factors (Bullard 1990;Bolin, Jackson, and Crist 1998;Ngo 2001;Wisner et al 2004;Bolin 2007;Neumayer and Plümper 2007;Wailoo 2010;Rufat et al 2015;Shepherd and KC 2015).…”

“…This suggests that assessing the risk of the most vulnerable coastal populations to inundation exposure from sea-level rise is increasingly important for improving coastal adaptation planning and policies. In this article, we define risk as a function of vulnerability, exposure, and hazard (see Jurgilevich et al 2017). …”

“…The temporal misalignment in previous studies is due to limited methodological approaches for analyzing gradual environmental change in concert with multi-decadal sociodemographic change (Jurgilevich et al 2017). Recent theoretical developments in demography, however, offer an approach for overcoming this shortcoming through a multi-dimensional predictive model of socio-demographic change called demographic metabolism (Lutz 2013;Lutz and Muttarak 2017).…”

Enhancing the Practical Utility of Risk Assessments in Climate Change Adaptation

“…The most important shift has occurred in the formulation of exposure, a concept that has not been well-defined in climate change adaptation studies [16,34]. The pre-IPCC AR5 considered the degree of exposure (that is, the degree to which railway tracks or electricity substations come into contact with a hazard as a consequence of the magnitude of climatic variation).…”

Climate vulnerability assessment methodology: Agriculture under climate change in the Nordic region

“…Several studies have analysed the relationships between risk and vulnerability in terms of both conceptual and methodological interpretations (e.g., Brooks 2003;Birkmann 2007;Scholz et al 2012). Jurgilevich et al (2017) argued that the general conceptual understanding of risk in the climate change context draws heavily on the work of the IPCC. Consequently, as the IPCC's understanding of vulnerability has developed from a climate change adaptation framing of vulnerability to a disaster risk conceptualization (Oppenheimer et al 2014), the notion of risk has become central to climate change research.…”