Social vulnerability projections improve sea-level rise risk assessments

Abstract

Rising seas will impact millions of coastal residents in coming decades. The vulnerability of coastal populations exposed to inundation will be greater for some sub-populations due to differences in their socio-demographic characteristics. Many climate risk and vulnerability assessments, however, model current populations against future environments. We advance sealevel rise risk assessments by dynamically modeling environmental change and sociodemographic change. We project three scenarios of inundation exposure due to future sea-level rise in coastal Georgia from 2010 to 2050. We align the sea-level rise projections with five population projection scenarios of socially vulnerable sub-populations via the Hamilton-Perry method and the theory of demographic metabolism. Our combined fast sea-level rise and middle population scenarios project a near doubling of the population exposed, and a more than fivefold increase for those at risk (i.e., residing in a census tract with high social vulnerability) and most at risk (i.e., high social vulnerability and high exposure) compared to the same estimate based on 2010 population data. Of vulnerable sub-populations, women had the largest absolute increase in exposure for all scenario combinations. The Hispanic/Latinx population's exposure increased the largest proportionally under the fast and medium sea-level rise projections and elderly people's (65+) under the slow sea-level rise scenario. Our findings suggest that for coastal areas experiencing rapid growth (or declines) in more socially vulnerable subpopulations, estimates based on current population data are likely to underestimate (or overestimate) the proportion of such groups' risk to inundation from future sea-level rise.

Removal of Positive Elevation Bias of Digital Elevation Models for Sea-Level Rise Planning

“…Although there is significant variability by region in projected SLR rates, global rates by 2100 predicted by the IPCC AR5 report ranged from 28-61 to 52-98 cm, depending on emission scenarios. SLR will impact millions of coastal residents over the coming decades [7] and there is a strong need for accurate elevation models to characterize vulnerability to SLR for both the built environment, as well as coastal habitats such as dunes, beaches, and wetlands, which can act as natural defenses against SLR.…”

Evaluation of the Climate Extremes Index over the United States using 20th and mid‐21st century North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program data

“…A new ecological drought metric could also be included in this proposed CEII, incorporating recent work in the literature that seeks to encompass the full dimensions of drought impacts, from ecosystem services to agricultural and socioeconomic impacts (Crausbay et al ., ). Recent work has also been done on the uneven impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations, and on exploring this differential vulnerability with socioeconomic variables (Hardy and Hauer, ; Thomas et al ., ). Thus the CEI could be a solely meteorological index, while the CEII would incorporate socioeconomic, hydrological, and ecological dimensions.…”

How demographic developments determine the management of hydrometeorological hazard risks in rural communities: The linkages between demographic and natural hazards research

“…Overall, the majority of the literature is nonetheless supporting the assumption that gender determines both people's capacities (Gaillard et al, 2018, p. 5) as well as their vulnerability and exposure to hazards (Cutter & Emrich, 2006;Fatemi et al, 2017;Hardy & Hauer, 2018;Lee, 2014;. Only Fekete (2009a) and doubt that female gender is necessarily related to higher vulnerability.…”

“…This gets even worse when they are living alone (Fatemi et al, ; Tragaki et al, ). Older people are mostly seen as being highly vulnerable and their presence as increasing social vulnerability (Adeola, ; Cutter et al, ; Cutter & Finch, ; Donner & Rodriguez, ; Fekete, , ; Gamble et al, ; Hardy & Hauer, ; He et al ; Lee, ). Only their anticipatory behavior and their extensive experience (as important source of information; Koks et al, ) are mentioned as potentially reducing vulnerability to natural hazards.…”