Projected Adaptive Capacity Associated with Climate-Change Impacts on Drought, Coastal Flood, and River Flood Hazard and Risk Using the INFORM Risk Index Framework

Abstract:

Climate change is one of the major drivers of disasters losses and undermined development efforts affecting the security and well-being of communities. Indicator-based assessments are widely used to monitor, report and evaluate the efficiency of the applied preventive policies in the context of disaster risk management. This study extends the widely used INFORM Risk Index to cover future climate-change amplified hazards and risks by incorporating available CMIP5 global drought, coastal flood, and river flood projections. The study considers a time horizon through the 2050s and implements the RCP 8.5 high greenhouse gas concentration scenarios and the SSP3 and SSP5 high-challenge shared socioeconomic pathways population projections. The extended INFORM Risk Index presented here captures 1) the change in exposure due to amplified climate related hazards – by adding projections of climate-related hazards; 2) the change in risk due to amplified hazard and exposure – by adding projections of future population; and 3) the change in risk due to amplified hazard, exposure, and vulnerability – by adding projections of coping and adaptive capacity. Results suggest that despite considerable variations in projected hazard and exposure levels among various socioeconomic scenarios, the risk magnitude changes only within defined risk classes (very low, low, medium, high and very high). The assessment of the vulnerability and lack of coping capacity dimensions suggests that several countries in all regions of the globe will need significant reduction in vulnerability and enhanced coping capacity in the future to maintain the current risk levels. A thorough sensitivity analysis reveals that the dominant source of the deviations arises from the degree of compensation among the indicators. Hence, trade-offs should be made explicit for choosing methodological choices that reflect the intended degree of compensation. The results of the analysis will be a bridge integrating the DRR and CCA communities in providing better insights for policy makers on the existential threats imposed by climate-related hazards as well as on the extent the amplified risk could be compensated by improved vulnerability and adaptive capacity measures.