Assessing Impacts of Climate Change and Climate Migration on Urban Infrastructure Resilience

Abstract:

Climate change is a risk amplifier for natural hazards like flood, drought, and wildfire. Existing infrastructure is not designed to handle climate change impacts, which means that it might not be well suited to absorb stressors and shocks associated with the increased occurrence and severity of these hazards. Individuals currently living in high risk areas may seek to relocate. An influx of individuals to lower risk areas from climate in-migration, alongside projected population growth associated with urbanization, is expected to increase the burden on urban infrastructure. A detailed region-by-region mapping of high versus low risk areas for flood, drought, and wildfire risks over time, combined with possible migration scenarios, can inform decision making about infrastructure resilience by visually highlighting areas with compound risks and the type of risks for a given infrastructure type. Since climate change effects are expected to amplify existing inequalities in urban communities, it is crucial to analyze resiliency of both urban infrastructure and communities, integrating physical and social measures of resilience. Resilient infrastructure is necessary to overcome future climatic extremes and population growth, but active measures to implement resilience plans are rare and limited (e.g. focused largely on interrelated flood hazards). Exploring infrastructure interdependencies within these cities can lead to strategies to reduce vulnerabilities. This work presents an initial spatial analysis of climate risk in the US, defined as an increase in probability risk for a given natural hazard with the goal of informing resilience plans and infrastructure standards. This work aims to generate data that can inform the promotion of equitable and healthy communities in cities and to begin to investigate the interrelationship between infrastructure, urban planning, urban design, public policy, health and human behavior to design and advance resilient and sustainable urban infrastructure systems.