Examples of Vulnerability Assessment Aggregation Results from other Regions Potential Vulnerability to Climate change in the European Union Kathrin Renner EURAC.Research,, Risk, Vulnerability and Climate Change Unit, Bolzano Italy, (kathrin.renner@eurac.edu) Spatial Vulnerability Assessments Advantages Disadvantages - presents a large amount of information in a simplified and visually attractive manner - Maps summarise and synthesise information in a way to be useful for policy decisions - Uncertainties in the data and important analytical assumptions may be hidden from the user - Impediments with data availability and accuracy, methodological issues and other issues that arise in any assessment process 1
Spatial Vulnerability Assessments variety of studies Purposes vary according to the specific study, however, generally intended to have the same objectives: to identify areas at potentially high risk of climate impacts so-called climate change hotspots and to identify planning and capacity building needs or to better target funding and adaptation programs There is as yet no consensus on what constitutes best practise in spatial Vulnerability Assessments Over recent years the number of spatial VAs increased; conceptualisations, methods, and data used to assess vulnerability multiplied All of the commonly used methodologies have their strengths and weaknesses Examples from other Regions (1) Example 1: Regional Climate Change Programme: Southern Africa Aim: Explore where current and future climate stressors have the greatest impact within the SADC region, and how adaptive capacity could shape the vulnerability of communities Hotspot analysis Method: - Indicator based. For current situation (2008) and future (2050), weighting - Weighted overlay of indicators for each component - Weightings from 1 to 3 - Classification on a scale from 1 to 9 (using Jenks classification or logarithmic) - Exposure (8) and Sensitivity (23) indicators combined to single layer representing Impact of climate related stressors. Then combining this with values from Adaptive Capacity (12) analysis to get vulnerability Hotspots - Smoothing analysis to calculate average values for the data within a search radius of 50km, to identify locations for centres of hotspots 6 2
Examples from other Regions (1 cont d) Vulnerability values range from 1 to 10, where 1 is low (blue) and 10 is high (red) Davies, R.A.G., & Midgley, S.J.E. (2010). Risk and vulnerability mapping in Southern Africa: a hotspot analysis Adaptation Series. Cape Town, South Africa: OneWorld Sustainable Investments (Pty) Ltd. 7 Examples from other Regions (1 cont d) Values range from 1 to 10, where 1 is low (blue) and 10 is high (red) Davies, R.A.G., & Midgley, S.J.E. (2010). Risk and vulnerability mapping in Southern Africa: a hotspot analysis Adaptation Series. Cape Town, South Africa: OneWorld Sustainable Investments (Pty) Ltd. 8 3
Examples from other Regions (1 cont d) Comparision between the hotspot areas for current (2008) and future (2015) conditions Davies, R.A.G., & Midgley, S.J.E. (2010). Risk and vulnerability mapping in Southern Africa: a hotspot analysis Adaptation Series. Cape Town, South Africa: OneWorld Sustainable Investments (Pty) Ltd. Values range from 1 to 10, where 1 is low (blue) and 10 is high (red) 9 Examples from other Regions (1 cont d) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) http://www.cccep.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/papers/90-99/wp95-spatial-mapping-socio-ecological-vulnerability-environmentalchange-southern-africa.pdf 10 4
Examples from other Regions (2) Example 2: Burundi Aim: Identification of climate change hotspots to target funding and adaptation programs Spatial scale: national and local VA carried out for three Vulnerabilities: Malaria, Erosion and Drought Method: Vulnerability composed of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Process: workshops in country to develop impact chains, define indicators and weights Data: Climate projections at 25km resolution for two time periods in the future for RCP 4.5 and 8.5 (raster), Sensitivity indicators (vector) mostly on municipality level, Adaptive Capacity indicators (vector) on provincial level Classification: Vulnerabilities ranged from 1 to 5 (displayed on maps as stretched colour scheme) Examples from other Regions (2 cont d) 5
Examples from other Regions (2 cont d) Examples from other Regions (2 cont d) 6
Examples from other Regions (3) Example 3: Pan-european Vulnerability Assessment ESPON Climate project basis for identifying regional typologies of climate change exposure, sensitivity, impact and vulnerability tailor-made adaptation options can be derived which are able to cope with regionally specific patterns of climate change seven case studies from the transnational to the very local level Weighting by Delphi-based approach (questionnaire survey) ESPON Climate. (2011). Climate Change and Territorial Effects on Regions and Local Economies. Applied Research 2013/1/4. Final Report, Version 31/5/2011 http://www.espon.eu/export/sites/default/documents/projects/appliedresearch/climate/espon_climate_summaryrep ort_final.pdf Source: ESPON Climate Climate Change and Territorial Effectson Regions and Local Economies - Applied Research 2013/1/4 Summary Report 7
Potential economic impact of climate change Aggregated potential impact of climate change 8
Capacity to adapt to Climate change Potential Vulnerability to Climate change 9
Change in regional exposure to coastal storm surge events Inputs: - Storm surge heights of a 100-year return event (no CC proj. Incl.) - Ass.: due to Sea-level-rise storm surge heights increase 1m - Based on global DEM Hydro1k (USGS 2010), 1km resolution, calculated which areas would be additionally inundated by coastal flooding Potential physical impact of climate change This pattern results from sea level rise and a projected increase in river floods. It fits well with the climate change types North-western and Northern Europe which came out of the cluster analysis. 10
Some other studies Vulnerability studies with a sectoral focus: - Vulnerability Assessment for climate change and the fisheries and the Aquaculture sector by the FAO Vulnerability studies using PCA: - Mali: de Sherbinin, A., Chai-Onn, T., Giannini, A., Jaiteh, M., Levy, M., Mara, V., and Pistolesi, L. (2014). Mali Climate Vulnerability Mapping. Technical Report for the USAID African and Latin American Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project. Washington, DC: USAID. Retrieved from http://community.eldis.org/.5bf8c6aa - U.S.A.: Cutter, S.L., Boruff, B.J., and Shirley, W.L. (2003). Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards*. Social Science Quarterly, 84(2), 242-261. Retrieved from 10.1111/1540-6237.8402002 - Germany: Fekete, A. (2010). Social vulnerability to river floods in Germany. UNU-EHS Graduate Research Series, PhD Dissertation. (Vol. 4) 23 Thank you for your attention! 11