Abstract
Abstract. Megacities are predominantly concentrated along coastlines, making them exposed to a diverse mix of natural hazards. The assessment of climatic hazard risk to cities rarely has captured the multiple interactions that occur in complex urban systems. We present an improved method for urban multi-hazard risk assessment. We then analyze the risk of New York City as a case study to apply enhanced methods for multi-hazard risk assessment given the history of exposure to multiple types of natural hazards which overlap spatially and, in some cases, temporally in this coastal megacity. Our aim is to identify hotspots of multi-hazard risk to support the prioritization of adaptation strategies that can address multiple sources of risk to urban residents. We used socioeconomic indicators to assess vulnerabilities and risks to three climate-related hazards (i.e., heat waves, inland flooding and coastal flooding) at high spatial resolution. The analysis incorporates local experts' opinions to identify sources of multi-hazard risk and to weight indicators used in the multi-hazard risk assessment. Results demonstrate the application of multi-hazard risk assessment to a coastal megacity and show that spatial hotspots of multi-hazard risk affect similar local residential communities along the coastlines. Analyses suggest that New York City should prioritize adaptation in coastal zones and consider possible synergies and/or trade-offs to maximize impacts of adaptation and resilience interventions in the spatially overlapping areas at risk of impacts from multiple hazards.
Highlights
Megacities host 500 million people or 6.8 % of the global population, a proportion that is projected to rise to 8.7 % by 2030 (UNDESA, 2016)
Most of the temporally overlapping extreme events identified in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database between 1876 and 2016 were related to multiple heat waves happening at a distance of up to 3 or 4 days (13 events), followed by two consecutive days of extreme precipitation (9 events) and days of extreme heat followed by high precipitation (3 events)
This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the relevance of a multi-hazard approach in a coastal megacity and its application to three of the main hazards that affect New York City: heat waves, coastal flooding and inland flooding
Summary
Megacities (i.e., urban areas exceeding 10 million inhabitants) host 500 million people or 6.8 % of the global population, a proportion that is projected to rise to 8.7 % by 2030 (UNDESA, 2016). These urban agglomerations are highly interconnected and vibrant centers in which enormous physical and intellectual resources are concentrated. Large cities themselves modify the local and regional environment, changing the microclimate (e.g., by creating urban heat islands, UHIs), paving over soil and altering ecosystem processes and building up infrastructure (e.g., roads, buildings, pipes, wires), which, together with projected impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, contributes to magnifying hazard impacts in coastal inhabited areas (Pelling and Blackburn, 2013). In the metropolitan region 97 people lost their life, thousands were displaced and eco-
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
