Profiling urban vulnerabilities to climate change: An indicator-based vulnerability assessment for European cities

Tapia, Carlos; Abajo, Beñat; Feliú, Efrén; Mendizabal, Maddalen; Martínez, José Antonio Martínez; Fernández, J. German; Laburu, Txomin; Lejarazu, Adelaida

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.02.040

Cited by 162 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…In Southern Europe, adapting to some of the projected changes could only be achieved by a fundamental, and expensive, re-engineering of each city or water resource system, as significant adaptation to climate extremes has already been implemented and radical changes will be needed to achieve more. By contrast, in Central Europe, although major, disruptive changes in hydroclimate are expected, there should be capacity and economic resource to support adaptation (Tapia et al 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The work presented here on hazards is a necessary contribution to the next steps of assessing overall future risk, and then designing appropriate adaptation. For the next step we plan to combine this hazard information with a pan-European assessment of urban vulnerability (Tapia et al 2017) and exposure to assess future overall climate risks in European cities. Our analysis does not preclude the need for detailed climate change impact assessment for each city but it provides comparable information for different impacts and cities that can be used to prioritise national and European adaptation investments, and guide more detailed adaptation studies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Future heat-waves, droughts and floods in 571 European cities

Guerreiro

Dawson

Kilsby

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

307

172

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Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate risks due to their agglomeration of people, buildings and infrastructure. Differences in methodology, hazards considered, and climate models used limit the utility and comparability of climate studies on individual cities. Here we assess, for the first time, future changes in flood, heat-waves (HW), and drought impacts for all 571 European cities in the Urban Audit database using a consistent approach. To capture the full range of uncertainties in natural variability and climate models, we use all climate model runs from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for the RCP8.5 emissions scenario to calculate Low, Medium and High Impact scenarios, which correspond to the 10th, 50th and 90th percentiles of each hazard for each city. We find that HW days increase across all cities, but especially in southern Europe, whilst the greatest HW temperature increases are expected in central European cities. For the low impact scenario, drought conditions intensify in southern European cities while river flooding worsens in northern European cities. However, the high impact scenario projects that most European cities will see increases in both drought and river flood risks. Over 100 cities are particularly vulnerable to two or more climate impacts. Moreover, the magnitude of impacts exceeds those previously reported highlighting the substantial challenge cities face to manage future climate risks.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future heat-waves, droughts and floods in 571 European cities

Guerreiro

Dawson

Kilsby

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

307

172

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rarely were outcome measures such as malnutrition, body mass index, or morbidity employed (e.g., de Sherbinin, Chai‐Onn, Jaiteh, et al, ; van Wesenbeeck et al, ). Furthermore, papers varied in their consideration of past literature to identify relevant drivers of vulnerability; for example, Tapia et al () conducted an exhaustive literature review of 150 studies to identify climate impact chains in European cities and to select indicators of vulnerability across multiple exposure types. Nonclimate biophysical indicators included land use and land cover (50% of studies), geographic proximity to physical features (e.g., coasts, rivers, roads) (38%), or vegetation types (26%), soil (19%), and topography (12%) (Figure ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate vulnerability mapping: A systematic review and future prospects

Sherbinin

Bukvic

Rohat

et al. 2019

WIREs Climate Change

114

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Maps synthesizing climate, biophysical and socioeconomic data have become part of the standard tool‐kit for communicating the risks of climate change to society. Vulnerability maps are used to direct attention to geographic areas where impacts on society are expected to be greatest and that may therefore require adaptation interventions. Under the Green Climate Fund and other bilateral climate adaptation funding mechanisms, donors are investing billions of dollars of adaptation funds, often with guidance from modeling results, visualized and communicated through maps and spatial decision support tools. This paper presents the results of a systematic review of 84 studies that map social vulnerability to climate impacts. These assessments are compiled by interdisciplinary teams of researchers, span many regions, range in scale from local to global, and vary in terms of frameworks, data, methods, and thematic foci. The goal is to identify common approaches to mapping, evaluate their strengths and limitations, and offer recommendations and future directions for the field. The systematic review finds some convergence around common frameworks developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, frequent use of linear index aggregation, and common approaches to the selection and use of climate and socioeconomic data. Further, it identifies limitations such as a lack of future climate and socioeconomic projections in many studies, insufficient characterization of uncertainty, challenges in map validation, and insufficient engagement with policy audiences for those studies that purport to be policy relevant. Finally, it provides recommendations for addressing the identified shortcomings. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Values‐Based Approach to Vulnerability and Adaptation

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“…The term "waterlogging" used in our study was used in previous studies [15,40], which was also called "pluvial flooding" in a few literature works [41,42]. To fully quantify waterlogging, at least three aspects were included, i.e., waterlogging spot location and inundation range and depth.…”

Section: Urban Waterlogging Risk Spots and Scale Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Impervious Surface on the Spatial Distribution of Urban Waterlogging Risk Spots at Multiple Scales in Guangzhou, South China

Zhang

Cheng

et al. 2018

Sustainability

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An impervious surface is considered one of main factors affecting urban waterlogging. Previous studies found that spatial pattern (composition and configuration) of impervious surfaces affected urban waterlogging. However, their relative importance remains unknown, and the scale-effect of the spatial pattern on urban waterlogging has been ignored. To move forward, our research studied the relationship between spatial patterns on the impervious surface and its subcategories (building and pavement) on urban waterlogging risk spots using Pearson correlation, partial redundancy analysis and performed at three grid scales (1 km × 1 km, 3 km × 3 km, 5 km × 5 km) and the catchment scale based on different spatial resolution land cover maps (2 m, 10 m and 30 m). We identified positively-correlated metrics with urban waterlogging risk spots, such as the composition of impervious surface (i.e., total impervious surface, building, pavement) and the aggregation metric of the total impervious surface at most scales, as well as two negatively correlated metrics (i.e., proximity metric of building, fragmentation metric of total impervious surface). Furthermore, the total variance of urban waterlogging risk spots explained by the spatial pattern of the total impervious surface and its subcategories increased with studied grid and catchment scales while decreasing from a fine to a coarse resolution. The relative contribution of the impervious surface composition and configuration to the variation of urban waterlogging risk spots varied across scales and among impervious surface types. The composition contributed more than the configuration did for the total impervious surface at both grid and catchment scales. Similar to total impervious surface, the composition of buildings was more important than its configuration was at all the grid scales, while the configuration of buildings was more important at the catchment scale. Contrary to the total impervious surface, the configuration of pavement at both the grid and catchment scales mattered more than their compositions did. Furthermore, the composition of the building was more important than that of pavement, but its configuration mattered less. Our study could provide a multi-scale landscape perspective with detailed suggestions for controlling the area of impervious surface and optimizing its spatial configuration in urban waterlogging risk mitigation and urban planning.

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Profiling urban vulnerabilities to climate change: An indicator-based vulnerability assessment for European cities

Cited by 162 publications

References 80 publications

Future heat-waves, droughts and floods in 571 European cities

Future heat-waves, droughts and floods in 571 European cities

Climate vulnerability mapping: A systematic review and future prospects

Effects of Impervious Surface on the Spatial Distribution of Urban Waterlogging Risk Spots at Multiple Scales in Guangzhou, South China

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