A novel approach to developing local flood vulnerability scenarios based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways framework: Sectoral risks and policy implications

In this study, we extend the global-scale Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to develop local SSPs as a tool to inform adaptation decisions (a so-called ‘climate service’) for the city of Flensburg, Germany. Flensburg experiences regular coastal flooding during storm events, which is expected to increase with sea-level rise (SLR). To develop robust adaptation strategies under the uncertainties of future SLR and socioeconomic development in the city, local socioeconomic scenarios can help explore plausible future socioeconomic conditions and how these conditions drive adaptation strategies. We employ a multi-scale co-production approach for developing such local scenarios. Using the global SSPs as boundary conditions, we construct local SSP narratives based on local SSP elements that we compile during the process. We integrate local stakeholder knowledge into the local SSPs in an iterative manner with the help of focus group discussions, a scenario workshop, and email feedback. This process results in four local SSP narratives that explore alternative trends in socioeconomic development in Flensburg and are embedded in developments at national to global scales. Due to their local relevance, the extended local SSPs can serve as a climate service to support Flensburg in developing adaptation plans to cope with the future impacts of SLR.

A review of regional variations in vulnerability to infectious diseases and policy implications for climate change and health

Future changes in climate and socioeconomic systems will drive both the availability and use of water resources, leading to evolutions in scarcity. The contributions of both systems can be quantified individually to understand the impacts around the world, but also combined to explore how the coevolution of energy-water-land systems affects not only the driver behind water scarcity changes, but how human and climate systems interact in tandem to alter water scarcity. Here we investigate the relative contributions of climate and socioeconomic systems on water scarcity under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways-Representative Concentration Pathways framework. While human systems dominate changes in water scarcity independent of socioeconomic or climate future, the sign of these changes depend particularly on the socioeconomic scenario. Under specific socioeconomic futures, human-driven water scarcity reductions occur in up to 44% of the global land area by the end of the century.

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.

© 2018 The Authors Socio-economic scenarios enable us to understand the extent to which global-, national- and local-scale societal developments can influence the nature and severity of climate change risks and response options. Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) enable a systematic exploration of the challenges to adaptation and mitigation that alternative futures entail. However, SSPs are primarily defined for the global scale. If countries are to test their adaptation and mitigation options for robustness across plausible future socio-economic conditions, then SSPs require country-relevant detail to understand climate change risks at the national and local scales. New Zealand is used to illustrate how nationally relevant socio-economic scenarios, nested within SSPs can be developed to inform national- and local-scale studies of climate change impacts and their implications. Shared policy assumptions were developed, involving a mix of climate-specific and non-climate-specific policies, to demonstrate how international links and global-scale developments are critical locally—local choices may accelerate, reduce or even negate the impact of global trends for extended periods. The typology was then ‘tested’ by applying it in a local context. The research challenges observed in developing credible, salient and legitimate national-scale socio-economic scenarios include issues in developing scenarios across a multidisciplinary team. Finally, recommendations for adapting shared climate policy assumptions to produce national and local scenarios, and for assessing the feasibility and effectiveness of climate change adaptation options are presented. These include the need for: guidelines to embed national scenarios in global frameworks; a limit the number of plausible futures; inter-operability of models; an ability to work towards effective multi-disciplinary teams and integrative research; and the opportunity to involve participatory processes where feasible.

Socio-economic scenarios enable us to understand the extent to which global-, national- and local-scale societal developments can influence the nature and severity of climate change risks and response options. Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) enable a systematic exploration of the challenges to adaptation and mitigation that alternative futures entail. However, SSPs are primarily defined for the global scale. If countries are to test their adaptation and mitigation options for robustness across plausible future socio-economic conditions, then SSPs require country-relevant detail to understand climate change risks at the national and local scales. New Zealand is used to illustrate how nationally relevant socio-economic scenarios, nested within SSPs can be developed to inform national- and local-scale studies of climate change impacts and their implications. Shared policy assumptions were developed, involving a mix of climate-specific and non-climate-specific policies, to demonstrate how international links and global-scale developments are critical locally—local choices may accelerate, reduce or even negate the impact of global trends for extended periods. The typology was then ‘tested’ by applying it in a local context. The research challenges observed in developing credible, salient and legitimate national-scale socio-economic scenarios include issues in developing scenarios across a multidisciplinary team. Finally, recommendations for adapting shared climate policy assumptions to produce national and local scenarios, and for assessing the feasibility and effectiveness of climate change adaptation options are presented. These include the need for: guidelines to embed national scenarios in global frameworks; a limit the number of plausible futures; inter-operability of models; an ability to work towards effective multi-disciplinary teams and integrative research; and the opportunity to involve participatory processes where feasible.

© 2018 The Authors Socio-economic scenarios enable us to understand the extent to which global-, national- and local-scale societal developments can influence the nature and severity of climate change risks and response options. Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) enable a systematic exploration of the challenges to adaptation and mitigation that alternative futures entail. However, SSPs are primarily defined for the global scale. If countries are to test their adaptation and mitigation options for robustness across plausible future socio-economic conditions, then SSPs require country-relevant detail to understand climate change risks at the national and local scales. New Zealand is used to illustrate how nationally relevant socio-economic scenarios, nested within SSPs can be developed to inform national- and local-scale studies of climate change impacts and their implications. Shared policy assumptions were developed, involving a mix of climate-specific and non-climate-specific policies, to demonstrate how international links and global-scale developments are critical locally—local choices may accelerate, reduce or even negate the impact of global trends for extended periods. The typology was then ‘tested’ by applying it in a local context. The research challenges observed in developing credible, salient and legitimate national-scale socio-economic scenarios include issues in developing scenarios across a multidisciplinary team. Finally, recommendations for adapting shared climate policy assumptions to produce national and local scenarios, and for assessing the feasibility and effectiveness of climate change adaptation options are presented. These include the need for: guidelines to embed national scenarios in global frameworks; a limit the number of plausible futures; inter-operability of models; an ability to work towards effective multi-disciplinary teams and integrative research; and the opportunity to involve participatory processes where feasible.

The central part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, is a highly flood-prone area of the province. The lives and assets of local communities are deeply vulnerable, attributed to the recurrence of seasonal floods. This concern has motivated decision-makers and the research community to develop and adopt best management practices to address flood vulnerability issues. One of the commonly used methods for evaluating flood vulnerability is empirical investigation using composite indicators. However, there are several issues with the available flood vulnerability literature, using composite indicators in the study area. The objectives of the current study are therefore twofold. On the one hand, it demonstrated in a comprehensive step-by-step approach to develop flood vulnerability composite indicator taking into account the broad range of stakeholders and the reliability of research. On the other hand, the flood vulnerability profile of the selected communities is being developed. Households’ survey was conducted in the selected communities using random sampling. The composite indicators of flood vulnerability were developed as the relative measure of flood vulnerability across the selected communities. A robustness check was also carried out using convenient techniques to address the problem of uncertainty. For such a purpose, the composite indicators of flood vulnerability were developed through various data rescaling, weighting, and aggregation schemes. The relative levels of flood vulnerability are identified across the selected communities, and the findings are illustrated by colored matrices. Different factors were identified for being responsible for the relative vulnerability of various communities. Jurisdiction-wise assessment of flood vulnerability reveals that communities located in Charsadda district are more vulnerable to flooding compared to those in Nowshera district. The study can facilitate a wide range of stakeholders and decision-makers not only to develop composite indicators for flood vulnerability but also to scientifically justify it as a management tool for flood risk reduction.

Built environment and health

Scenario analysis is a widely employed method for addressing uncertainties when assessing the physical and socio-economic impacts of climate change. Global scenarios have been extensively used in this context. However, these scenarios are in most cases not suitable for supporting local analyses. On the other hand, locally developed scenarios may lack the global context, thus having limited comparability with or transferability to other locations. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP), which have been primarily developed for climate impact research, provide the possibility to extend the existing global narratives and adapt them to local characteristics in order to develop locally relevant scenarios. Here, we propose a methodological framework for producing harmonized scenarios across different case studies. This framework was developed in the EVOKED project and combines elements of top-down and bottom-up approaches to develop local scenarios for four regions in northern Europe. We employ the SSP as boundary conditions and, in cooperation with stakeholders from these four regions, develop local scenarios for a range of SSP. The developed sets of scenarios are consistently informed by global developments and are therefore comparable with other downscaled scenarios developed in different regions. At the same time, they have been based on local participatory processes, thus being locally credible and relevant to the needs of stakeholders. The local scenarios constitute a climate service per se as they can raise stakeholder awareness of the processes that will drive risk, exposure, and adaptive capacity in the future and inform discussions on mitigation strategies and adaptation pathways.

The most devastating flood event in Kota Bharu was recorded in December 2014, which affected several properties worth millions of dollars and thousands of homes. Damage to physical properties, especially buildings, is identified as a significant contributor to flood disasters in Malaysia. Therefore, it is essential to address physical flood vulnerability by developing an integrated approach for modeling buildings’ flood vulnerability to decrease the flood consequences. This study aims at developing a flood vulnerability assessment approach using an indicator-based model (IBM) for individual buildings in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, Malaysia. An intensive literature review and expert opinions were used to determine suitable indicators that contribute to the physical flood vulnerability of buildings. The indicators were grouped into three components, i.e., flood hazard intensity (I), building characteristics (C), and effect of the surrounding environment (E). The indicators were further refined based on expert opinions and Relative Importance Index (RII) analysis. Based on their contribution to the Malaysia local building flood vulnerability, priority weight is assigned by the experts to each of the selected indicators using the participatory Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). A spatial database of buildings in Kota Bharu is developed through field surveys and manually digitizing building footprints from satellite imageries. The identified indicators and their weight are added to each building footprint. The Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) aggregation method combined the weight of indicators into a vulnerability index and maps. The results of a physical flood vulnerability were validated using building damage information obtained through interviews with the community that experienced previous flood in the study area. The result showed that about 98% of the study area’s buildings have either moderate or low vulnerability to flooding. The flood vulnerability map has an overall accuracy of 75.12% and 0.63 kappa statistics. In conclusion, the IBM approach has been used successfully to develop a physical flood vulnerability for buildings in Kota Bharu. The model contributes to support different structural and non-structural approaches in the flood mitigations process.

Firm size in gas distribution. Economies of scale, regulatory dynamics, and policy implications

Integrating environmental concerns into sectoral policies is a priority for sustainable development. Despite environmental policy integration being established in Europe in 1998, major weaknesses still limit its effectiveness, such as poor coordination at national and subnational levels. We use the integration of scavenger conservation into sanitary European regulations to illustrate how the adoption of different criteria when implementing the same legislation affects the effectiveness of the environmental policy integration process. We focus on the implementation across Spanish autonomous regions of Regulation EU 142/2011 allowing dead livestock to be left in situ for feeding scavengers. Using Asturias (NW Spain) as a case study, we provide spatially explicit estimates of two key factors guiding the implementation of the legislation, the estimates of scavenger feeding requirements, and the area designated as scavenger feeding zones, based on different criteria used across Spanish regions. We detected a remarkable variation in both scavenger feeding requirements (up to 452%; ranging from 108 to 596 t/year) and scavenger feeding zones (up to 72% in size) depending on the implementation criteria used. The concentration of scavenger feeding requirements per km2 within scavenger feeding zones (i.e., carrion demand) varied up to 167%. Similarly, the concentration of carrion supply from livestock within scavenger feeding zones (i.e., carrion availability) changed up to 33%. Policy implications. Our results support the need for systematic evaluations to choose the best criteria for implementing sanitary regulations concerning scavenger conservation. Interregional coordination in implementing the agreed criteria emerges as a relevant issue to improve the effectiveness of environmental policy integration for transboundary conservation of European scavengers.

<p>The water-energy-food-land-climate nexus sectors interact in a complex system operating on many scales. Better understanding this system, and its response to change (e.g. climate change, policy implementation) is urgently required, yet little progress has been made on integrating real policy objectives into nexus models to assess potential nexus-wide impacts of policy decisions. Given current concerns on resource scarcity, and on the growing appreciation of how connected the sectors are, under-standing how the implementation of policy objectives in one area will impact (1) other nexus sectors and (2) potential future system behaviour, is becoming vitally important. Despite this, little progress has been towards such an understanding. In this work, a fully integrated system dynamics model of the water-energy-food-land-climate nexus in Latvia is presented. The model couples all the nexus sectors in a feedback driven modelling framework. Latvia is represented in five distinct yet inter-acting regions, allowing finer scale interrogation of results and policy implications. In addition, real Latvian policies are integrated within various nexus sectors (e.g. a policy to improve crop yields or to expand agricultural lands at the expense of other land use types). Due to the integrated nature of the model, executing any policy will not only have an impact within the policy sector (e.g. water), but the nexus-wide impacts can also be determined (e.g. on GHG emissions). Results show that due to the inter-connectedness, impacts range far more widely than may be anticipated. For example, implementing policies to achieve goals related to cereal land coverage in Latvia prevents the attainment of policy goals relating to emissions reductions. As such, synergies can be identified and harnessed, while trade-offs can be avoided. Policy can then be (re-)designed to maximise nexus-wide benefits. This work is carried out in the framework of the H2020 project SIM4NEXUS, which will deliver 10 more such models exploring the policy impacts on the nexus at different scales (sub-national to European). As such, the work starts to fill a crucial academic and applied knowledge gap: how policies designed for a single sector have impacts that ripple throughout the entire nexus. As such, guidelines for more intelligent policy design can start to be formulated, something that is lacking in current nexus research.</p>

Tokyo’s long-term socioeconomic pathways: Towards a sustainable future