Transcript URBAN FUTURES

Vulnerability and Uncertainty
Uncertainty in Climate Change Research: An
integrated Approach
Paty Romero-Lankao
URBAN FUTURES
***********
www.ral.ucar.edu/csap/themes/urbanfutures
Goals
1. Engaging in mutual learning
2. Discussing key paradigms of
vulnerability and risk
Shanghai
3. Integrating vulnerability,
uncertainty and risk, gaps
and challenges
a) paradigms, cognitive biases
b) nature of science policy
interface
4. Concluding remarks
Beijing geographyblog.eu
Mexico City 2012
Vulnerability
Uncertainty
• Potential for loss and damage
• Indeterminacy
• Difficulty to cope with stress
or hazard
• Limited or lack of knowledge
• Lack of ability or capacity to
withstand shock
• Margin of error
• Degree of susceptibility to a
natural hazard
• The place and context specific
capacity to respond to risk
• Set of possible states and
outcomes
• Measurement of risk: set of
measured uncertainties
What do we mean by vulnerability?
Impact/outcome vulnerability
(Top-down)
• Origins: natural hazards/top down CC
• Vulnerability results from exposure to
hazards sensitivity (impacts)
• Scaled-down scenarios, future impacts
and adaptation options
Inherent/contextual
vulnerability (bottom up)
• Political economy/environmental justice
• Focus on who is more vulnerable and
why, assets and capacity, and structural
drivers of vulnerability
Resilience and integrated
approaches
Romero-Lankao, Qin 2011; Romero-Lankao, Qin & Dickinson 2012
• Multi- and interdisciplinary approaches
• Focus on socio-ecological systems,
underlying drivers, feedback
mechanisms and building flexibility and
learning
O’Brien et al 2007
Turner et al 2003
My own definition of key concepts
• Hazards are probable or
looming stresses people are
exposed to
 One-off extremes
 Slow-onset events
 Subtle everyday threats
• Capacity a pool of assets/options
• Individual (age, medical conditions)
• Household assets (education,
income, housing, social networks)
• Infrastructures/built environment
• Governance (territorial planning,
services, pollution controls, ..)
• Lack of capacity = vulnerability
• Risk is the possibility of
negative outcomes resulting
from the combination of
 hazards and capacities of
exposed populations and
 the interaction of broader
societal and environmental
processes that shape their
experience of risk
Patricia Romero-Lankao, Sara Hughes, Jorgelina
Hardoy, Hua Qin, Angélica Rosas-Huerta, Roxana
Bórquez, Andrea Lampis (2012) and (2013)
Urban Risk and Vulnerability Capacity
Romero-Lankao, Hughes, Rosas, Qin, Borquez, Lampis (2014)
Goals
1. Discussing key paradigms to
vulnerability and risk
2. Integrating vulnerability,
uncertainty and risk, gaps
and challenges
a) paradigms, cognitive biases
b) nature of science policy
interface
Shanghai
Beijing geographyblog.eu
3. Engaging in mutual learning
4. Concluding remarks
Mexico City 2012
2a. Urban populations’ vulnerability to temperaturerelated hazards: motivation
• Global relevance of urban areas,
increased number of case studies
– Different hazards (temperature,
floods, SLR, storms)
– Different geographical areas
– Different dimensions (impacts,
exposure)
– Different paradigms
Coastal flooding
after Sandy…
Data Conservancy awarded by NSF
Urban populations’ vulnerability to temperaturerelated hazards: motivation
• Can we conduct a meta-analysis
and “meta-knowledge” to draw
out broader lessons from this
diverse body of literature?
• Focus on temperature-related hazards
– Large impacts
– Clearly tied to climate change
– Enough number of studies
Data Conservancy awarded by NSF
What do we mean by urban vulnerability?
Urban vulnerability as Impact
(48)
• Natural hazards origins
• Vulnerability results from exposure to
hazards, people’s sensitivity & impacts
Inherent urban vulnerability
(3)
• Political economy approach
• Focus on adaptive capacity and
structural drivers of vulnerability
Urban resilience/integrated (3)
Romero-Lankao and Qin 2011
• Multidisciplinary, integrated approach
• Focus on socio-ecological systems,
adaptation, mechanisms
244 Cities Covered in the Meta-analysis
Source: Patricia Romero Lankao, Hua Qin and Katie Dickinson 2012
Determinants of urban vulnerability to temperature-hazards:
evidence and agreement
(1) Text color denotes categories of vulnerability dimensions. Green = Hazard; Yellow = Exposure; Red = Sensitivity; Blue = Adaptive
capacity/adaptation (2) Symbols in parentheses = direction of relationship between vulnerability and outcome (medium or high level of
agreement only) + positive relationship (increases vulnerability); - negative relationship (decreases vulnerability); ~ no relationship
- 13 factors account for 66% of tallies on determinants
of urban populations’ vulnerability
- hazard magnitude, age, population density, gender, pre-existing
medical conditions, education, income, poverty, minority status,
acclimatization, and access to home amenities
- Two factors extensively studied: hazard magnitude and
age
- Findings biased by
- Geographic coverage
- Dominance of a paradigm: “urban vulnerability as impact”
Urban vulnerability studies: research questions
Number of studies/Research question
1. Relationship temperature and mortality
EXCLUDING additional factors (see question 2)?
2. Additional factors affecting the relationship
between temperature and human health
a.
a.
a.
Factors making people more sensitive to
temperature
Factors influencing people’s ability to adapt
Structural drivers (e.g., socioeconomic inequality,
political power) of vulnerability to temperaturerelated hazards
3. How does air pollution (or other biophysical
factors) affect the temperature-health relationship?
4. How does climate change affect temperaturehealth outcomes relationships
5. Other factors influencing temperature-related
hazards and their distribution (e.g., urban form, land
cover, heat islands)
6. People’s perception of vulnerability to
temperature-related hazards
7. existing and potential adaptation options?
Vulnerability as
impact
48
Inherent
vulnerability
3
Resilience
All studies
3
54
15
31%
0
0%
0
0%
15
28%
32
68%
2
67%
3
100%
37
70%
25
23
53%
49%
2
2
67%
67%
2
3
67%
100%
29
28
55%
53%
0
0%
2
67%
3
100%
5
9%
21
45%
0
0%
0
0%
21
40%
5
11%
0
0%
0
0%
5
9%
2
4%
0
0%
2
67%
4
8%
0
1
0%
2%
1
0
33%
0%
1
1
33%
33%
2
2
4%
4%
Urban vulnerability studies: methods
Vulnerability as
impact
Quantitative
Time series/longitudinal
Cross-sectional
Spatial
Meta-regression (multiple studies)
Qualitative
Type of data
Primary
Secondary
Simulated/modeled
Level of analysis
Individual
Neighborhood
City
Temporal scale
Single event
Short term
Medium term
Long term
Inherent
vulnerability
Resilience
All studies
48
31
16
1
2
0
100%
65%
33%
2%
4%
0%
2
1
0
1
0
2
67%
33%
0%
33%
0%
67%
3
0
2
2
0
1
100%
0%
67%
67%
0%
33%
52
31
18
4
2
3
98%
58%
34%
8%
4%
6%
0
48
3
0%
100%
6%
2
2
0
67%
67%
0%
2
3
1
67%
100%
33%
4
52
4
8%
98%
8%
6
1
47
17%
2%
98%
1
2
0
33%
67%
0%
0
3
0
0%
100%
0%
7
6
46
13%
11%
87%
8
26
19
5
17%
55%
40%
11%
3
1
0
0
100%
33%
0%
0%
3
0
0
0
100%
0%
0%
0%
14
27
18
5
26%
51%
34%
9%
Uncertainty results from the questions we
ask and methods and data we use
• Three paradigms have made important contributions
– Nature of hazards
– Processes shaping inequalities in vulnerability
– Integration of human & environmental factors
• Still knowledge has shed light on only certain aspects
of the problem
• Scale can influence a study’s findings (city, short term)
2b. Nature of science policy interface
globally and locally
 Collective, deliberative process
 Three features of effectiveness
 Relevance (decision makers/users)
 Credibility (scientific/technical
quality)
 Legitimacy: fairness and impartiality
 Impact on decision making is not a
measure of effectiveness
 Science-policy interface fit with
 Scientific context
 Policy and political context
National Research Council. Analysis of Global Change Assessments, 2007.
Boundary
Relevance
Scientific
Context
Credibility
Legitimacy
Science-Policy
Interface
Policy and
Political Context
Challenges to science-policy interface
Scientific context
 Level of maturity & consensus
 Treatment of uncertainty
Policy and Political Context
 Where are climate VIA in policy
agenda
 Evidence and data available
 Whose agenda this is & what
interests and values are at stake
 Knowledge from several fields,
capacity for fields to
 Ability to progress depends on
 communicate to different
audiences
 agree on approaches to the
questions of concern
 integrate results stemming from
different paradigms
 Agreement over actions to be taken
 Extent of conflict over knowledge
users are arguing about
 To what extent actors base policy
arguments on scientific claims or
else on values and vested interests
How to enhance credibility and
legitimacy? E.g., IPCC SPM approval
process
Developed/developing countries
or
countries by income levels
“small island developing states”
“small islands”, or “small island
developing states and other small
islands.”
http://mediamatters.org/
Goals
1. Discussing key paradigms to
vulnerability and risk
2. Integrating vulnerability,
uncertainty and risk, gaps
and challenges
a) paradigms, cognitive biases
b) nature of science policy
interface
Shanghai
Beijing geographyblog.eu
3. Engaging in mutual learning
4. Concluding remarks
Mexico City 2012
Integrating uncertainty into vulnerability:
gaps and challenges
• Lack of consistency between “paradigms” result in
cognitive biases, a source of uncertainty
• Key determinants of vulnerability are understudied,
(because they are not quantifiable)
• Differing approaches to uncertainty between
– scientists want to reduce and analyze it
– decision makers and stakeholders frame it based on their
values and preference (perceive it as unavoidable)
Three reasons why vulnerability studies promise
more certainty that they can deliver
• Complexity of the system is greater than that described
by other types of studies
• Difficult to obtain data to test key interactions between
vulnerability determinants
• Informing decision making is complex; involves values,
power and preferences in addition to science