Advancing index-based climate risk assessment to facilitate adaptation planning: Application in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China

Abstract

One of the key issues in climate risk management is to develop climate resilient infrastructure so as to ensure safety and sustainability of urban functioning systems as well as mitigate the adverse impacts associated with increasing climate hazards. However, conventional methods of assessing risks do not fully address the interaction of various subsystems within the city system and are unable to consolidate diverse opinions of various stakeholders on their assessments of sector-specific risks posed by climate change. To address this gap, this study advances an integrated-systems-analysis tool - Climate Risk Assessment of Infrastructure Tool (CRAIT), and applies it to analyze and compare the extent of risk factor exposure and vulnerability over time across five critical urban infrastructure sectors in Shanghai and Shenzhen, two cities that have distinctive geo-climate profiles and histories of infrastructure development. The results show significantly higher level of variation between the two cities in terms of vulnerability levels than that of exposure. More specifically, the sectors of critical buildings, water, energy, and information & communication in Shenzhen have significantly higher vulnerability levels than Shanghai in both the 2000s and the 2050s. We further discussed the vulnerability levels of subsystems in each sector and proposed twelve potential adaptation options for the roads system based on four sets of criteria: technical feasibility, flexibility, co-benefits, and policy compatibility. The application of CRAIT is bound to be a knowledge co-production process with the local experts and stakeholders. This knowledge co-production process highlights the importance of management advancements and nature-based green solutions in managing climate change risk in the future though differences are observed across the efficacy categories due to the geographical and meteorological conditions in the two cities. This study demonstrates that this knowledge co-creation process is valuable in facilitating policymakers' decision-making and their feedback to scientific understanding in climate risk assessment, and that this approach has general applicability for cities in other regions and countries.