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Abstract. Megacities are predominantlyconcentrated along coastlines, making them exposed to a diverse mix ofnatural hazards. The assessment of climatic hazard risk to cities rarely hascaptured the multiple interactions that occur in complex urban systems. Wepresent an improved method for urban multi-hazard risk assessment. We thenanalyze the risk of New York City as a case study to apply enhanced methodsfor multi-hazard risk assessment given the history of exposure to multipletypes of natural hazards which overlap spatially and, in some cases,temporally in this coastal megacity. Our aim is to identify hotspots ofmulti-hazard risk to support the prioritization of adaptation strategies thatcan address multiple sources of risk to urban residents. We usedsocioeconomic indicators to assess vulnerabilities and risks to threeclimate-related hazards (i.e., heat waves, inland flooding and coastal flooding) at high spatial resolution.The analysis incorporates local experts' opinions to identify sources ofmulti-hazard risk and to weight indicators used in the multi-hazard riskassessment. Results demonstrate the application of multi-hazard riskassessment to a coastal megacity and show that spatial hotspots ofmulti-hazard risk affect similar local residential communities along thecoastlines. Analyses suggest that New York City should prioritize adaptationin coastal zones and consider possible synergies and/or trade-offs tomaximize impacts of adaptation and resilience interventions in the spatiallyoverlapping areas at risk of impacts from multiple hazards.
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A 2022 household survey about impacts and human response to climate-related multi-hazards in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Whitehorse
Little is known about how multi-hazard environments affect people, especially those living in urban areas in northern latitudes. This study surveyed homeowners in both Anchorage and Fairbanks, USA, Alaska’s two larger urban centers, to measure individual risk perceptions, mitigation response, and damages related to wildfire, ice hazards, and permafrost thaw. A geospatial hazard assessment informed the survey’s stratified sampling design. The survey had 751 respondents.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1927537
- PAR ID:
- 10475937
- Publisher / Repository:
- NSF Arctic Data Center
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- climate risk household survey Alaska hazard mitigation permafrost ice hazard rain-on-snow rain-in-winter wildfire
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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