Developing and understanding cascading effects scenario of typhoons in coastal mega-cities from system perspectives for disaster risk reduction: A case study of shenzhen, China

Abstract

Coastal mega-cities provide spaces of economic and social activities in contemporary China. Due to the cumulated effects of rapid urbanization and climate change, typhoon disasters always trigger serious cascading effects by affecting interrelated urban elements in high-density urban areas, thereby amplifying disastrous consequences. Developing cascading effects scenarios of typhoons, as well as understanding cause–effect relationships among the involved cascading events is essential to designing disaster risk reduction strategies in coastal mega-cities. However, high uncertainty of the natural hazards and the increasing complexity of coastal mega-cities present challenges to develop and understand cascading effects of typhoons. This research proposes an innovative approach to develop, model, and analyze cascading effects scenario of typhoon disasters in Shenzhen, China for providing insights of disaster risk reduction from system perspectives. First, considering the uncertainty of typhoons and complexity of the study area, the cascading effects scenario of typhoon disasters is developed by encoding hazard transitions triggered by historical cases, in combination with expert judgment. A network approach based on Social Network Analysis is employed to model, visualize, and analyze cascading effects scenarios of typhoons aiming to explore the underlying complexity of typhoon disasters. Finally, disaster risk reduction strategies are designed and evaluated from network analysis perspectives. This research increases the understanding of the evolution process of cascading effects triggered by typhoons in rapid-urbanizing mega-cities from system perspectives. Furthermore, it provides insights of designing effective disaster risk reduction strategies for urban governments to improve sustainability and resilience of coastal mega-cities to typhoon disasters.