Abstract
Extreme heat events are gaining ever more policy and societal attention under a warming climate. Although a breadth of expertises are required to understand drivers of vulnerability to hazards such as extreme heat, it is also acknowledged that expert assessments in group settings may be subject to biases and uneven power relations. In this Technical Note, we outline a structured deliberative process for supporting experts to work collaboratively to assess social vulnerability to a climate-related hazard, in this case extreme heat in Taiwanese cities. We argue that adapting elicitation approaches such as Q-Methodology for use in collaborative settings can help to organise expert discussion and enable dialogue and mutual learning, in a way that supports consensus-building on vulnerability assessment. Outcomes from our collaborative assessments suggest elderly people living alone, elderly people over 75, pre-existing circulatory diseases and level of participation in community decision-making may all be notable drivers of heat vulnerability in the Taiwanese context. Methodologically, we argue that collaborative sorting exercises offer a way to embed local and experiential knowledges into assessments of available evidence, but that strong facilitation and additional checks are necessary to ensure an inclusive process that reflects the diversity of perspectives involved.
Highlights
Introduction and rationalePolicy and societal awareness of the risks posed by extreme heat under a changing climate are growing
In the final sort conducted by the whole group (Fig. 5), the statement People with pre-existing circulatory diseases are at greater risk in heat was sorted as having the highest agreement (+ 5), followed by Elderly people living alone are at risk in heat (+ 4) and Elderly people are at great heat risk (+ 4)
In the individual Q-Sorts of experts assigned to Sub-Group 2, the highest mean level of agreement was with the statements People working outdoors or in manual work are at particular risk (+ 3.18); Elderly people living alone are at risk in heat (+ 2.83); and Elderly people are at great heat risk (+ 2.69).The lowest mean level of agreement was with the statements Access to internet helps citizens prepare for and respond to heat events (− 2.5); Gender affects vulnerability to heat (− 2.25); and People with higher incomes are less vulnerable to heat (− 1.75)
Summary
Introduction and rationalePolicy and societal awareness of the risks posed by extreme heat under a changing climate are growing. Natural Hazards (2022) 112:2609–2623 events (i.e. acute heat lasting several days); and from gradual rises in average temperature that lead to an overall increase in exposure to heat outside of recognised heat events (i.e. chronic heat that constitutes a slower-onset hazard) (Oppermann et al 2021). Hazard from both extreme and chronic heat events is serious in cities in the Tropics, which face a disproportionate warming trend as well as enhanced heat island effects with dense and rapid development (Ramsay et al 2021). Knowledge from areas such as sociology, urban planning, and social policy can build a richer understanding of factors that inform people’s ability to reduce their risk from heat, such as community connectedness during extreme heat events (Klinenberg 2002), priority for cooling measures in urban planning processes (Byrne et al 2016), capacity to access risk communication information (Sampson et al 2013) and effectiveness of public policies to reduce heat risk (Boeckmann 2016)
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