Community resilience and urban core shelter implementation: A Wellington case study

<p>As a result of climate change, extreme weather events are becoming more common around the world. Coupled with the ever-present threat of sea level rise that coastal cities face there is a potential for far more severe weather events to occur. This thesis will seek to understand how an existing city can adapt to a more hostile environment, and how in the event of an extreme weather occurrence it maintains its function. There is an urgent need to understand how a city can respond when faced with these situations. Previous extreme weather events, Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and extreme flooding around the world, highlight the danger of a lack of preparedness and resilience found in most cities. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how the concept of a core shelter, as a way to address the threats of extreme weather events, can be applied to a well-established urban context, Wellington NZ. A core shelter is a structure that in the event of a large-scale disaster, protects its users, and post-disaster still reaches permanent housing standards without being deemed to be a permanent dwelling. It will also look at whether it is possible to create areas in an existing city that can be considered “safe havens” in the event of an extreme natural incident. This thesis outlines the need for these shelters by identifying the potential threats of climate change in a Wellington context, and by understanding the vulnerability of Wellington’s current building stock. It reaches a conclusion that through the implementation of core shelters in Wellington NZ, resilience will be improved, disaster response efforts will be aided, and destruction arising from extreme weather events will be reduced. In addition, it identifies the areas of Wellington that are deemed to be of higher risk in a disaster or extreme weather event, analyses an existing building’s potential to become a community resilience/core shelter, and proposes a custom building that could be built on Leeds St and Ghuznee St.</p>

The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events resulting from climate change have led to grid outages and other negative consequences. To ensure the resilience of buildings which serve as primary shelters for occupants, resilient strategies are being developed to improve their ability to withstand these extreme events (e.g., building upgrades and renewable energy generators and storage). However, a crucial step towards creating a resilient built environment is accurately estimating building performance during such conditions using historical extreme climate change-induced weather events. To conduct Building Performance Simulation (BPS) in extreme conditions, such as weather events induced by climate change, it is essential to utilize Actual Meteorological Year (AMY) weather files instead of Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) files. AMY files capture the precise climatic conditions during extreme weather events, enabling accurate simulation of such scenarios. These weather files provide valuable data that can be used to assess the vulnerabilities and resilience of buildings to extreme weather events. By analyzing past events and their impacts using BPS tools, we can gain insights into the specific weaknesses and areas that require improvement. This approach applies to both existing buildings needing climate change-resilient retrofits and new building designs that must be compatible with future climatic conditions. Moreover, the intensification and frequency increase of these extreme weather events makes developing adaptation and resilient-building measures imperative. This involves understanding the potential losses that households may experience due to the intensification of extreme events and developing farsighted coping strategies and climate-proof resilient-building initiatives. However, addressing the knowledge gap caused by the absence of an AMY weather file dataset of extreme events is essential. This will allow for accurate BPS during past extreme climate change-induced weather events. To fill this gap, this article introduces a comprehensive .epw format weather file dataset focusing on historical extreme weather events in Canada. This collection encompasses a diverse array of past extreme climate change occurrences in various locations, with potential for future expansion to include additional locations and countries. This dataset enables energy simulations for different types of buildings and considers a diverse range of historical weather conditions, allowing for better estimation of thermal performance.

People experiencing poverty and inequality will be affected first and worst by the impacts of climate change to infrastructure and human settlements, including those caused by increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events and natural disasters. They have the least capacity to cope, to adapt, to move and to recover. Community service organisations (CSOs) play a critical role in supporting individuals, families and communities experiencing poverty and inequality to build resilience and respond to adverse changes in circumstances. As such, the services they provide comprise a critical component of social infrastructure in human settlements. However, very little is understood about CSOs own vulnerability to – or their role in managing and mitigating risks to their clients and the community from – climate change impacts to physical infrastructure. The Extreme Weather, Climate Change and the Community Sector – Risks and Adaptations project examined the relationship between physical and social infrastructure (in the form of CSO service provision). Specifically, the ways in which the climate-driven failure of CSO service delivery worsens risks to the individuals and communities they serve and, on the other hand, how preparedness may reduce vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to human settlements and infrastructure. The research comprised a comprehensive and critical scoping, examination and review of existing research findings and an audit, examination and judgment-based evaluation of the current vulnerabilities and capacities of CSOs under projected climate change scenarios. It employed three key methods of consultation and data collection. A literature review examined research conducted to date in Australia and comparative countries internationally on the vulnerability and climate change adaptation needs of CSOs. A program of 10 Community Sector Professional Climate Workshops consulted over 150 CSO representatives to develop a qualitative record of extreme event and climate change risks and corresponding adaptation strategies specific to CSOs. A national survey of CSOs, which resulted in the participation of approximately 500 organisations, produced a quantitative data set about the nature of CSO vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather impacts to infrastructure, whether and how CSOs are approaching the adaptation task and key barriers to adaptation. While the methods employed and the absence of empirical data sets quantifying CSO vulnerability to climate change impacts create limitations to the evidence-base produced, findings from the research suggest that CSOs are highly vulnerable and not well prepared to respond to climate change and extreme weather impacts to physical infrastructure and that this underlying organisational vulnerability worsens the vulnerability of people experiencing poverty and inequality to climate change. However, the project results indicate that if well adapted, CSOs have the willingness, specialist skills, assets and capacity to make a major contribution to the resilience and adaptive capacity of their clients and the community more broadly (sections of which will be plunged into adversity by extreme events). Despite this willingness, the evidence presented shows that few CSOs have undertaken significant action to prepare for climate change and worsening extreme weather events. Key barriers to adaptation identified through the research are inadequate financial resources, lack of institutionalised knowledge and skills for adaptation and the belief that climate change adaptation is beyond the scope of CSOs core business. On the other hand, key indicators of organisational resilience to climate change and extreme weather impacts include: level of knowledge about extreme weather risks, past experience of an extreme weather event and organisational size. Given its size, scope and the critical role the Australian community sector plays in building client and community resilience and in assisting communities to respond to and recover from the devastating impacts of extreme weather events and natural disasters, the research identifies serious gaps in both the policy frameworks and the research base required to ensure the sector’s resilience and adaptive capacity – gaps which appear to have already had serious consequences. To address these gaps, a series of recommendations has been prepared to enable the development and implementation of a comprehensive, sector-specific adaptation and preparedness program, which includes mechanisms to institutionalise knowledge and skills, streamlined tools appropriate to the needs and capacity of a diverse range of organisations and a benchmarking system to allow progress towards resilience and preparedness to be monitored. Future research priorities for adaptation in this sector have also been identified.

This paper reports the development and results of a model exploring the resilience of the Dutch electricity transmission infrastructure to extreme weather events. Climate change is anticipated to result in an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events over the coming decades. Situated in a low-lying coastal delta, the Netherlands may be particularly exposed to certain types of extreme weather(-induced) events. The degree to which the country’s electricity network may prove resilient in the face of these future events is an open question. The model focuses on two types of extreme events – floods and heat waves – and assesses two types of adaptation measures – substation flood protections and demand-side management. The model employs a network-based approach in assessing infrastructure resilience – explicitly representing the structure and properties of the Dutch transmission infrastructure – and extends previous work by accounting for key power system characteristics such as capacity constraints and cascading failures. From a practice perspective, the results offer a first indication of the vulnerability of the Dutch electricity transmission infrastructure in the context of climate change. These results suggest that the network displays some vulnerability to both floods and heat waves. Both types of adaptation measures tested are found to enhance resilience, though substation flood protection shows greater benefits. Whilst the model was specifically developed for the study of electricity networks, we anticipate that this method may also be applicable to other types of transport infrastructures.

The climate change and related phenomena is one of the biggest challenges of today’s civilisation. The data shows an upward trend of occurrence of meteorological, hydrological, and climatic phenomena worldwide, with the largest increase observed in extreme hydrological phenomena, such as floods and mass movement. Intense rainfall and resulting floods can lead to erosion and transport of large amount of natural and anthropogenic material and thus influencing the spatial distribution of chemical elements on Earth surface. The redistribution of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) is of special concern as they are largely persistent, non-biodegradable, and many are known to accumulate along the food chain. The environmental consequences of remobilization and redistribution of pollutants during flood events are not yet widely recognized and understood. An extreme rainfall and floods severely affected Slovenia (EU) at the beginning of August 2023, resulting in more than 10,000 landslides and spatial redistribution of large quantity of sediments, including heavily polluted ones. One of the most affected areas was the Carinthia region at the north of Slovenia. This area is strongly impacted by a 300-years of lead and zinc mining in the Mežica area. Although the mining activities have ceased 30 years ago, the environment (e.g., soil, floodplains) is still heavily contaminated with Pb, Zn, Cd, Mo, and other PTEs, and there are several mine waste deposits prone to erosion. The Geological Survey of Slovenia has been studying the geochemical characteristics of the wider Mežica area for several decades. Levels of PTEs in stream sediments were regularly monitored (every 3 years) since 2013.   To determine the potential influence of extreme rainfall and floods on redistribution of PTEs in the environment that have been previously contaminated with PTEs, the following samples in the Mežica area in 2023 were collected: (1) stream sediment samples before the extreme weather event in August as a part of regular monitoring, (2) repeated samples of stream sediment after heavy storm at the end of July and after the extreme event in August at selected monitoring locations, (3) flood sediment samples along the Meža Valley after the extreme weather event in August. All samples were prepared (dried at 35 °C and sieved

Extreme weather events and their resulting impacts threaten all levels of society. Climate change can amplify the frequency and intensity of associated hazards. One of the key-challenges for decision-makers in civil protection is adapting to the changing landscape of weather-induced impacts driven by climate change. It is therefore essential to assess and estimate the changing conditions for extreme weather events under climate change.This study investigates the changing landscape of regional extreme weather events in the Alpine region by utilizing weather circulation type classification through its relationship with weather-induced potential extreme events. Therein, large-scale weather types take the role of relevant precursors for regional extreme events. The local-scale potential impact events that are associated with prevailing weather types are derived by using percentile-based methods on high-resolution, gridded precipitation data. ERA5 mean sea level pressure and the classification scheme GWT ('Gross-Wetter-Typen') are used to derive 18 classes of cyclonic and anti-cyclonic weather types, representing a prevailing circulation on a daily basis for the whole Alpine region. Subsequently, unsupervised hierarchical clustering (Agglomerative clustering) is used to evaluate overlaps between cluster families in order to derive a subset of 'high-impact' weather types. The relationship between those weather types and local-scale extreme events is further characterized by analyzing percentile-based indicators from station data and high-resolution observational data. Finally, we extend our analysis by applying found relationships to state-of-the-art climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) to investigate the changing landscape for extreme weather events under different climate change scenarios.Our findings indicate that a subset of weather types, related to specific cyclonic circulation patterns, is mostly responsible as precursor for extreme precipitation events. Those patterns furthermore show increases in frequency under the scenario SSP3-7.0, that are consistent across the climate model ensemble. Associated changes of precipitation totals suggest increases in intensity, however these intensity changes are not as conclusive due to large inter-model spread.

Background:Climate change's influence on extreme weather events poses a significant threat to the morbidity and mortality of asthma patients. The aim of this study was to examine associations between extreme weather events and asthma-related outcomes.Methods:A systematic literature search for relevant studies was performed using the PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and ProQuest databases. Fixed-effects and random-effects models were applied to estimate the effects of extreme weather events on asthma-related outcomes.Results:We observed that extreme weather events were associated with increasing risks of general asthma outcomes with relative risks of 1.18-fold for asthma events (95% CI 1.13–1.24), 1.10-fold for asthma symptoms (95% CI 1.03–1.18) and 1.09-fold for asthma diagnoses (95% CI 1.00–1.19). Extreme weather events were associated with increased risks of acute asthma exacerbation with risk ratios of asthma emergency department visits of 1.25-fold (95% CI 1.14–1.37), of asthma hospital admissions of 1.10-fold (95% CI 1.04–1.17), of asthma outpatient visits of 1.19-fold (95% CI 1.06–1.34) and of asthma mortality of 2.10-fold (95% CI 1.35–3.27). Additionally, an increase in extreme weather events increased risk ratios of asthma events by 1.19-fold in children and 1.29-fold in females (95% CI 1.08–1.32 and 95% CI 0.98–1.69, respectively). Thunderstorms increased the risk ratio of asthma events by 1.24-fold (95% CI 1.13–1.36).Conclusions:Our study showed that extreme weather events more prominently increased the risk of asthma morbidity and mortality in children and females. Climate change is a critical concern for asthma control.

There is an increasing body of evidence in India and across the world regarding the mental health impacts of the extreme weather events, along with other direct and indirect impacts. There is a strong evidence to suggest that these extreme weather events are occurring due to climate change resulting from global warming. The Climate Change debate does not talk much about dealing with the mental health impacts, preoccupied as it is in dealing with physical and economic impacts of climate change. Also, extreme weather events have been occurring in India for a while now. The Indian government has woken up to the fact that these weather events, bringing unprecedented devastation, are indeed “extreme”, only after the recent Kashmir floods. India has been an active participant in the climate change debate and discussions. The purpose of the present chapter is to take an overview of the mental health impacts of the major extreme weather events and emphasize the importance of preparedness in meeting these mental health impacts. The chapter looks into some of the best practices adopted by nations and cities, to deal with the mental health challenges thrown in the wake of such extreme weather events and suggests measures, for governments and communities, to be better prepared to deal with mental health issues arising from future extreme weather events.

Events over the past few decades have brought extreme weather and climate events to the fore of societal concerns. Ordinary citizens, individuals in the private sector, and people at the highest levels of government worry about the apparent increase in the frequency of weather and climate events causing extreme, and in some instances catastrophic, impacts. We differentiate between weather events – relatively short-term phenomena associated with, for instance, tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons, for example), severe floods, and the like – and climate events – longer-lived and/or serial phenomena such as drought, season-long heat waves, record wildfire seasons, multiple occurrences of severe storms in a single season or year, etc. The differentiation is related to the distinction between weather, which can be forecast on short timescales of less than 1–2 weeks, and climate, which can be forecast on monthly, seasonal, and annual timescales. The adage "Climate is what you expect and weather is what you get" probably originates from the fact that climate is the statistical average of the weather over a specified time period. Regardless of whether an extreme event is weather- or climate-related, it could have significant and numerous implications for society.

Extreme weather events have been demonstrated to be increasing in frequency and intensity across the globe and are anticipated to increase further with projected changes in climate. Solar climate intervention strategies, specifically stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI), have the potential to minimise some of the impacts of a changing climate while more robust reductions in greenhouse gas emissions take effect. However, to date little attention has been paid to the possible responses of extreme weather and climate events under climate intervention scenarios. We present an analysis of 16 extreme surface temperature and precipitation indices, and associated vegetation responses, applied to the Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS). GLENS is an ensemble of simulations performed with the Community Earth System Model (CESM1) where SAI is simulated to offset the warming produced by a high emission scenario throughout the 21st century, maintaining surface temperatures at 2020 levels. GLENS is generally successful at maintaining global mean temperature near 2020 levels, however it does not completely offset some of the projected warming in northern latitudes. Some regions are also projected to cool substantially in comparison to the present day, with the greatest decreases in daytime temperatures. The differential warming/cooling also translates to fewer very hot days but more very hot nights during the summer, and fewer very cold days or nights compared to the current day. Extreme precipitation patterns, for the most part, are projected to reduce in intensity in areas that are wet in the current climate and increase in intensity in dry areas. We also find that the distribution of daily precipitation becomes more consistent with more days with light rain, and fewer very intense events than occur currently. In many regions there is a reduction in the persistence of long dry and wet spells compared to present day. However, asymmetry in the night and day temperatures, together with changes in cloud cover and vegetative responses could exacerbate drying in regions that are already sensitive to drought. Overall, our results suggest that while SAI may ameliorate some of the extreme weather hazards produced by global warming, it would also present some significant differences in the distribution of climate extremes compared to the present day.

Natural hazards have displaced over 26.4 million people per year since 2008 (Norwegian Refugee Council, Global estimates 2015: people displaced by disasters. Retrieved from http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Media/201507-globalEstimates-2015/20150713-global-estimates-2015-en-v1.pdf, 2015). This number will only increase as climate change continues to exacerbate displacement due to monsoon-related flooding, coastal erosion, cyclones, and salinity intrusion (Barua P, Shahjahan M, Rahman M, Rahman S, Molla M. Forced Migr Rev 1(56), 88–91, 2017; Toufique K, Islam A, Int J Disaster Risk Reduction 10(Part A):236–249, 2014). Events such as Typhoon Haiyan, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Irma and Michael represent examples of extreme weather events that had devastating effects on communities. Weick and Sutcliffe (Managing the unexpected: resilient performance in an age of uncertainty, 2nd edn. Wiley, San Francisco, 2007) argue that ‘Unexpected events often audit our resilience. Everything that was left unattended becomes a complex problem and every weakness comes rushing to the forefront.’ In the Chatham House report ‘Preparing for High Impact, Low Probability Events’, Lee et al. (Preparing for high-impact, low-probability events; lessons from Eyjafjallajokull. Chatham House Report, 2012:vii) ‘…found that governments and businesses remain unprepared for such events … the frequency of ‘high-impact, low-probability’ (HILP) events in the last decade signals the emergence of a new ‘normal’. Extreme weather and climate related events pose serious public health threats to vulnerable communities and has resulted in mass migrations and displacements; creating what some refer to as ‘climate refugees’. Threats and consequences stemming from climate related events are transboundary and transnational and thereby emerge as a global health security concern. Scenario planning provides a key ‘leverage point’ in managing (mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery) such disaster consequences by illuminating the space of possibilities regarding impact and vulnerabilities. To do so requires a framework to help characterize the challenges associated with the impact of climate related disasters.

Abstract. Extreme environmental events, such as floods, droughts, rainstorms, and strong winds have severe consequences for human society. Changes in extreme weather and climate events have significant impacts and are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate. The cost of damage caused by extreme climate events is rising all over the world. The European Environment Agency (EEA) report ("Climate Change, Impacts and Vulnerabilities in Europe 2012") stated that the cost of damage had increased from € 9 billion in the 1980s to € 13 billions in the 2000s. In the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that $ 188 billion in damage was caused by the severe weather events in 2011 and 2012. Understanding and identifying hydrometeorologic extreme events and their changes through time are key in sustaining agriculture and socio-economic development. Planning for weather-related emergencies, agricultural and reservoir management and insurance risk calculations, all rely on knowledge of the frequency of these extreme events. The assessment of extreme precipitation is an important problem in hydrologic risk analysis and design. Erosion and removal of the fertile soil layer through hydroclimatic extreme events is also a serious problem in semi-arid to arid regions, especially in mediterranean climates. Accurate measurements of precipitation on a variety of space and time scales are important to climate scientists and decision makers, including hydrologists, agriculturalists and emergency managers. The historical record of precipitation observations is limited mostly to land areas where rain gauges can be deployed, and measurements from those instruments are sparse over large and meteorologically important regions of the Turkey, such as over the Southeastern Anatolia Region. While rain gauge measurements are often used to tune hydrologic models, they are limited by their spatial coverage. Remote sensing techniques using spaceborne sensors provide an excellent complement to continuous monitoring of rain events both spatially and temporally. In this study we compare ground-station data with Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) products at the 3-hour time scale to evaluate satellite rain estimates for agricultural and hydrological applications in Turkey. The remote sensing dataset TRMM product 3B42 has been validated with daily rain gauge measurements in order to characterize rainfall variability in the Southeastern Anatolia region. The precipitation retrievals from the TRMM satellite were compared with data from 7 surface rain gauges within the period of 1998–2012. Spatiotemporal patterns through statistical analyses were identified by fitting Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) rainfall distribution to the rainfall time series, and the fitting results were analyzed focusing on the behaviour of the shape parameter. Spatial patterns and correlations of rainfall events across the study area were also analysed by the calculation of the 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles. Regional frequency relationship were developed using the chosen GEV distribution. The recurrence intervals for different years have been estimated using the GEV distribution and their spatial variability has been described. The recurrence intervals of large rainstorms have also been identified for the rain gauge stations with the related TRMM pixel time series and spatial patterns in the study area have been evaluated. Preliminary results indicate that there exist large discrepancies between rain gauge and TRMM data at mean rainfall values; however, least squares fits indicate reliable and quite linear correlation for the 90th, 95th, 99th percentiles (r2 = 0.70, 0.77, and 0.75 respectively) and the annual maximum daily amount of precipitation (r2 = 0.69). In other words, TRMM product 3B42 can be used to assess first-order rainfall statistics and recurrence intervals, but rainfall magnitudes vary significantly from ground measurements.

Extreme weather events and disruptions to HIV services: a systematic review.

Extreme weather events are expected to increase. The paper provides a concise overview of climate change as well as issues pertaining to extreme weather events. Several indicators used to quantify climate variability, to assess countries’ vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather negative impacts are presented. In Asia rice assumes strategic relevance, thus accounting most of the world production and consumption. This paper aims at expanding the above statement and at investigating the potential effects of weather events on rice supply using a multiple regression analysis. Given its vulnerability to climate change and its limited ability to cope with it, Asia is expected to be severely affected by the adverse impacts of extreme weather conditions, where food security still represents a major concern.

Climate change is predicted to make extreme weather events worse and more frequent in many places around the world. In New Zealand, the Earthquake Commission (EQC) was created to provide insurance for earthquakes. In some circumstances, however, homeowners affected by extreme weather events can also make claims to the EQC – for landslip, storm or flood events. In this paper, we explore the impact of this public natural hazard insurance on community recovery from weather-related events. We do this by using a proxy for short-term economic recovery: satellite imagery of average monthly night-time radiance. Linking these night-time light data to precipitation data records, we compare houses which experienced damage from extreme rainfall episodes to those that suffered no damage even though they experienced extreme rainfall. Using data from three recent intense storms, we find that households which experienced damage, and were paid in a timely manner by EQC, did not fare any worse than households that suffered no damage from these extreme events. This finding suggests that EQC insurance is serving its stated purpose by protecting households from the adverse impact of extreme weather events.