Factors influencing vulnerability to climate change-related health impacts in cities - A conceptual framework

Policy impact pathways of climate-related urban health vulnerability - A retrospective analysis

Climate change-related health risks are likely to become more prevalent in cities. Cities are also key actors in adaptation to these risks. Adaptation can take place through intentional measures to reduce vulnerability or exposure and unintentionally through other urban policy processes and outcomes. However, complex and dynamic relations between urban policy impacts and vulnerability development are an understudied phenomena. This limits the understanding of how urban climate-related health risks emerge and evolve. We examine urban policy pathways that influence vulnerability to climate-related health impacts with a most similar - most different case study. With a qualitative retrospective analysis of four urban areas in Finland we unveil the mechanism of how urban policy affects urban environment over time and how these impacts and changes shape vulnerability. Contrasting the most different cases, we show that urban policy impacts set differing preconditions to adaptation between local districts. We conclude by suggesting that to adapt to future challenges in cities with respect to social and ecological justice, it is necessary to mainstream adaptation into urban policies with continuous cross-sector and multi-level dialogue about the development of vulnerability.

Vulnerability assessment of heat waves within a risk framework using artificial intelligence

Current efforts to adapt to climate change are not sufficient to reduce projected impacts. Vulnerability assessments are essential to allocate resources where they are needed most. However, current assessments that use principal component analysis suffer from multiple shortcomings and are hard to translate into concrete actions. To address these issues, this article proposes a novel data-driven vulnerability assessment within a risk framework. The framework is based on the definitions from the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but some definitions, such as sensitivity and adaptive capacity, are clarified. Heat waves that occurred between 2001 and 2018 in Quebec (Canada) are used to validate the framework. The studied impact is the daily mortality rates per cooling degree-days (CDD) region. A vulnerability map is produced to identify the distributions of summer mortality rates in aggregate dissemination areas within each CDD region. Socioeconomic and environmental variables are used to calculate impact and vulnerability. We compared abilities of AutoGluon (an AutoML framework), Gaussian process, and deep Gaussian process to model the impact and vulnerability. We offer advice on how to avoid common pitfalls with artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms. Gaussian process is a promising approach for supporting the proposed framework. SHAP values provide an explanation for the model results and are consistent with current knowledge of vulnerability. Recommendations are made to implement the proposed framework quantitatively or qualitatively.