Mapping Vulnerability to Weather Extremes: Heat and Flood Assessment Approaches

Abstract

Assessing present social and biophysical conditions of communities that are at risk of injury due to extreme weather events is an important component of creating future visions of resilience. Spatial patterns of vulnerability to extreme events are manifestations of structural injustice that leave their mark on the built environment and in socio-spatial segregation patterns. Socio-spatial inequity often arises from development practices that favor particular racial and ethnic social groups over others. These segregation patterns are aligned with patterns of exposure to pollution, extreme weather events, and other types of environmental hazards. Spatial vulnerability assessments can be powerful tools for prioritizing where and how cities should make investments for mitigating the impacts of extreme events, and can provide an entry point for asking more fundamental questions about the processes that produce patterns of climate inequity, as well as how to avoid reproducing such processes in the future. Maps express uneven distributions of risk and manifestations of structural inequality in social–ecological–technological systems (SETS). They enable communities to visualize distributional injustice, consider ways in distributions that may be misaligned with cultural values, and develop adaptive practices toward climate justice. Here, we demonstrate approaches for assessing vulnerability to extreme flooding and heat, and show how vulnerability distributions are embedded in landscape patterns that produce uneven risk.