New methods for local vulnerability scenarios to heat stress to inform urban planning—case study City of Ludwigsburg/Germany

Abstract

Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives for developing vulnerability scenarios and so-called shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) have been undertaken. Most of these scenarios, however, do not provide sufficient information for local scenarios and local climate risk management. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios for vulnerability at the local scale in order to complement climate change scenarios. Heat stress is seen as a key challenge in cities in the context of climate change and further urban growth. Based on the research project ZURES (ZURES 2020 website), the paper presents a new method for human vulnerability scenarios to heat stress at the very local scale for growing medium-sized cities. In contrast to global models that outline future scenarios mostly with a country-level resolution, we show a new method on how to develop spatially specific scenario information for different districts within cities, starting from the planned urban development and expansion. The method provides a new opportunity to explore how different urban development strategies and housing policies influence future human exposure and vulnerability. Opportunities and constraints of the approach are revealed. Finally, we discuss how these scenarios can inform future urban development and risk management strategies and how these could complement more global or national approaches.

Strengthening risk-informed decision-making: scenarios for human vulnerability and exposure to extreme events

“…Moreover, it is also evident that more indicators are needed to better represent the multifaceted nature of human vulnerability to heat stress. In this regard, the project has also developed scenarios of socio-economic development, particularly focussing on the urban poor in Ludwigsburg (see Birkmann et al (2020) (under review)).…”

Climate Impact Assessment for Sustainable Structural Change in the Rhenish Lignite Mining Region

“…Some studies assume that the change in non-climatic factors in the future may even have a greater influence on climate impacts than climate change itself [2,33]. The Report on Germany's Vulnerability to Climate Change in 2015 pointed out quite appropriately that every projection of sensitivity, no matter how uncertain, increases the confidence of the statements on future climate impacts, since they must be wrong if they are based on the status quo of the socio-economic systems [34,35], using the example of the German city of Ludwigsburg, that cities and urban planning in general can influence the demographic structure and therefore future vulnerability [35]. This parallel modelling of climate and socio-economic factors was also published with examples from Germany in [10].…”

Increasing Trust in Climate Vulnerability Projections

“…The development of vulnerability projections is more common in the biophysical tradition (Garschagen et al., 2021), but community‐based assessments are increasingly using understanding of current vulnerability processes to identify and characterize potential future vulnerability (Birkmann et al., 2021; Flynn et al., 2018; Jurgilevich, 2021; Puntub et al., 2023; Terry et al., 2024). Whatever the approach used, however, projecting future trends is challenging.…”

“…This work seeks to identify the nature and degree to which climate change will affect the occurrence and magnitude of biophysical events or trends that may cause harm (exposure/hazard), understand the factors that put people and places at risk of such harm (sensitivity), affect the ability to respond to climate change to moderate potential damages and take advantage of new opportunities (adaptive capacity), and how these might change over time. In doing so, vulnerability research seeks to generate essential understanding on the multifaceted and differentiated impacts that climate change may have, for whom, where, and why (Birkmann et al., 2021; Ford & Smit, 2004; Jurgilevich, 2021; Naylor et al., 2020; Windfeld et al., 2019). In this way, vulnerability research has many parallels with studies using other conceptual framings—such as resilience, risk, and One Health—which seek to identify and examine future trajectories of change.…”