Multi-hazard risks in New York City
<p>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 mu...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2018-12-01
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| Series: | Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences |
| Online Access: | https://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/18/3363/2018/nhess-18-3363-2018.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>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.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1561-8633 1684-9981 |