Assessing climate change and health vulnerability at the local level: Travis County, Texas

Abstract

We created a measure to help comprehend population vulnerability to potential flooding and excessive heat events using health, built environment and social factors. Through principal component analysis (PCA), we created non-weighted sum index scores of literature-reviewed social and built environment characteristics. We created baseline poor health measures using 1999-2005 age-adjusted cardiovascular and combined diabetes and hypertension mortality rates to correspond with social-built environment indices. We mapped US Census block groups by linked age-adjusted mortality and a PCA-created social-built environment index. The goal was to measure flooding and excessive heat event vulnerability as proxies for population vulnerability to climate change for Travis County, Texas. This assessment identified communities where baseline poor health, social marginalisation and built environmental impediments intersected. Such assessments may assist targeted interventions and improve emergency preparedness in identified vulnerable communities, while fostering resilience through the focus of climate change adaptation policies at the local level.

An Approach to Developing Local Climate Change Environmental Public Health Indicators in a Rural District

“…Its focus on developing EPH indicators at the local level is also rare. Two examples at that spatial scale, Reid et al 2009 [118] and Prudent et al 2016 [119], developed composite climate change vulnerability indices based on a core set of indicators. Importantly, these indices were mapped to subcounty spatial scales to help local authorities and partners pinpoint the locations within counties where multiple vulnerabilities converge.…”

Health Co-Benefits of Green Building Design Strategies and Community Resilience to Urban Flooding: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

“…The project developed a pair of climate change vulnerability maps at the neighborhood level assessing the combined socio-demographic and environmental vulnerability of Travis County residents to extreme heat and flooding events, respectively. Based on the results of the vulnerability maps, published elsewhere [ 118 , 119 ], the project team identified three local policies that might consider prioritizing neighborhoods with high vulnerability for early interventions: the City of Austin sidewalk master plan, incentives encouraging installation of vegetated roofs, and the water quality program designed to remediate impaired streams. The results of this literature review further suggest green building strategies that the City might consider incentivizing or requiring in highly vulnerable neighborhoods.…”

Social Vulnerability Assessment for Flood Risk Analysis

“…Notably, most social vulnerability studies adopt a theoretical focus [52], although there has been an effort to perform empirical assessments in recent years [21,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59]. These studies may present the drawbacks of using different measurement procedures, which makes it difficult to compare their results.…”

“…Additionally, the different scale of studies is significant [56]. To date, research papers that estimate the social vulnerability of a municipality have applied a broad range of scales, with different cartographic units such as municipalities [61], municipal districts [40,62], and census blocks [57,58] or neighbourhoods [63]. Recently, new studies working with cadastral parcel data [59] have improved spatial accuracy.…”