Spatial analysis of vulnerability to climate change and climate variability Dr. Alexander Michael

253 Pages·2014·14.68 MB·English

by  Loes Colenbrander

MAPPING THE UNMEASURABLE?

SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF VULNERABILITY TO CLIMATE
CHANGE AND CLIMATE VARIABILITY

Alexander Michael de Sherbinin
Examining committee:

Prof.dr.ing A. Fekete University of Cologne
Prof.dr. P. Hooimeijer University of Utrecht
Prof.dr. V.G. Jetten University of Twente
Prof.dr. P.Y. Georgiadou University of Twente
Dr. D. Reckien University of Twente

ITC dissertation number 263
ITC, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands

ISBN 978-90-365-3809-1
DOI 10.3990/1.9789036538091

Cover designed by Job Duim
Printed by ITC Printing Department
Copyright © 2014 by de Sherbinin, Alexander M.
MAPPING THE UNMEASURABLE?

SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF VULNERABILITY TO CLIMATE
CHANGE AND CLIMATE VARIABILITY

DISSERTATION

to obtain
the degree of doctor at the University of Twente,
on the authority of the rector magnificus,
prof.dr. H. Brinksma,
on account of the decision of the graduation committee,
to be publicly defended
on Wednesday 3 December 2014 at 14.45 hrs

by

Alexander Michael de Sherbinin

born on 29 August 1962

in Massachusetts, United States of America
This thesis is approved by
Prof.dr.ir, M.F.A.M. van Maarseveen, promoter
Dr. R.V. Sliuzas, co-promoter
Foreword

In October 2011 I contacted Dr. Sliuzas at ITC about the possibility of
engaging in a fast-track PhD program through ITC, building on a number of
ISI listed publications on the broad topic of spatial approaches to climate
vulnerability assessment. By January 2012, I was enrolled in the Population,
Land and Urban Systems program and beginning work on the PhD.

My interest in this subject was conceived because of my role as deputy
manager of a NASA data center (the NASA Socioeconomic Data and
Applications Center (SEDAC)) that produces socioeconomic data to
complement NASA’s earth satellite remote sensing data sets. SEDAC data
have been widely used in journal articles and reports focusing on climate
change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation (IVA). I began by including
examples of SEDAC data usage in lectures on climate change IVA, and also
started to do my own analyses (see Chapter 4) and maps depicting potential
climate impacts (see Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3).

In 2009 CIESIN, the center at The Earth Institute of Columbia University
where I work, was contacted by Koko Warner of the United Nations
University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) and
Charles Ehrhardt of CARE to develop maps for a report entitled In Search of
Shelter. I had the privilege of leading the team of GIS specialists and
designers who produced the maps in this report. The report resulted in
substantial media attention in part because of the maps CIESIN produced,
which complemented field research from the Environmental Change and
Forced Migration project (EACH-FOR) (see Chapter 5). This successful
collaboration resulted in two more reports that included maps produced
under my direction, Where the Rainfalls: Climate Change, Food and
Livelihood Security, and Migration (2012) and Evidence from the Frontlines of
Climate Change: Loss and Damage to Communities Despite Coping and
Adaptation (2012).

Since 2012 I have been involved with work under the USAID-funded African
and Latin American Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project. Under
ARCC I was able to lead vulnerability mapping projects for Mali and Coastal
West Africa, to assist in the development of a spatial vulnerability
assessment training program, and to develop a technical report entitled
Spatial Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments: A Review of Data,
Methods and Issues (2014). Through these projects I gained considerable
first-hand experience in vulnerability mapping using the spatial index
approach, and was able to review the growing literature in this field.
As I write this forward, I am returning from a workshop entitled INQUIMUS:
Spatial Indicators and Assessment of Vulnerability and Resilience (Salzburg,
Austria, 15-17 September 2014), for which I served as a co-organizer, along
with colleagues at University of Salzburg’s Z_GIS, the European Academy
(EURAC), and University of Cologne. It was invigorating being amongst fellow
scholars wrestling with the challenges of vulnerability mapping and spatial
index creation. I owe a debt of gratitude to many of the participants for their
critical perspectives on the vulnerability mapping enterprise, especially those
whose work I cite in this thesis (i.e., David Abson, Alexander Fekete, and
Stefan Kienberger). My sense is that this field is, for better or worse, a
“growth industry” that will continue to require scientific contributions in order
to guide adaptation decision-making.

I dedicate this thesis to my mother, Dr. Polly Robinson de Sherbinin, who
demonstrated to me that it is possible to pursue one’s dreams later in life.
She acquired her doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst in 1983 at the age of 60 and went on to practice marriage and
family counseling until her death in 1997, touching many lives in the process.
As a Christian, I wish to give thanks to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for
helping me to fulfill this dream.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. van Maarseveen and Dr.
Sliuzas for comments and suggestions on various manuscripts, and for
support throughout the process. I would like to acknowledge my co-authors
on two of the chapters in this publication, Andrew Schiller and Alex Pulsipher
on Chapter 3, and Koko Warner and Charles Erhart on Chapter 5. I
appreciate the comments of numerous anonymous reviewers of the journal
articles contained in this thesis, who helped sharpen the arguments of each
chapter. Acknowledgements for additional contributions to specific chapters
are included in the footnotes on the title page of each chapter.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of my bosses, Robert Chen
and Marc Levy, who encouraged me to publish, and staff members of the
science and geospatial divisions of CIESIN (especially Susana Adamo, Tricia
Chai-Onn, Malanding Jaiteh, Vali Mara, Linda Pistolesi, and Sylwia Trzaska)
for engaging in a true “co-production of knowledge” over the past few years.
I gained tremendously from the insights and support of these colleagues in
the past few years.

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Table of Contents
Foreword .............................................................................................. i
Acknowledgements ............................................................................... iii
Acronyms ............................................................................................ vii
Chapter 1 Motivation, Frameworks and Background ................................. 1
1.1 Introduction and Motivation ...................................................... 2
1.2 The Theoretical Framing of Vulnerability ..................................... 3
1.3 Background: Spatial Vulnerability Assessment ............................ 9
1.3.1 Measurement Issues ........................................................... 11
1.3.2 Spatial resolution and spatial and temporal scale issues .......... 20
1.3.3 Uncertainties, validation, risk communication and decision
support ............................................................................. 25
1.4 Objective and Organization of the Dissertation .......................... 27
1.5 References ........................................................................... 29
Chapter 2 Climate Change Hotspots Mapping: What Have We Learned? .... 39
2.1 Introduction .......................................................................... 40
2.2 Assessment of Hotspots Mapping Efforts .................................. 41
2.2.1 Climate change exposure hotspots ....................................... 41
2.3.2 Population dynamics and migration hotspots ......................... 46
2.3.3 Disasters and humanitarian crises ........................................ 50
2.3.4 Agriculture and food security hotspots .................................. 51
2.3.5 Water resources hotspots .................................................... 56
2.4 Regional hotspots mapping efforts ........................................... 58
2.4.1 Hotspots Maps for Africa ..................................................... 58
2.4.2 Hotspots Map for Southeast Asia .......................................... 64
2.4.3 Hotspots Maps for Europe ................................................... 65
2.5 Discussion ............................................................................ 66
2.5.1 Data and methodologies ..................................................... 67
2.5.2 Where are the hotspots? ..................................................... 68
2.5.3 Map Design ...................................................................... 69
2.5.4 Hotspots maps as tools for decision making........................... 70
2.5.5 Suggestions for future research ........................................... 71
2.6 Conclusion ............................................................................ 72
Annex 2.1 Hotspots mapping based on expert opinion..................... 75
Annex 2.2 Summary table of global-scale hotspots mapping efforts .. 79
2.7 References ........................................................................... 81
Chapter 3 The vulnerability of global cities to climate hazards.................. 87
3.1 Introduction .......................................................................... 88
3.2 Framing Vulnerability ............................................................. 90
3.3 Spatial Approaches to Urban Climate Vulnerability Assessment ... 91
3.4 The Case Studies ................................................................... 94
3.4.1 Mumbai ............................................................................ 96
3.4.2 Rio de Janeiro ................................................................... 105
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3.4.3 Shanghai ......................................................................... 114
3.5 Discussion and Conclusions.................................................... 119
3.6 References .......................................................................... 120
Chapter 4 Climatic, Biophysical, and Socioeconomic Factors Affecting
Malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa ....................................................... 131
4.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 132
4.2 Methods .............................................................................. 137
4.3 Results ................................................................................ 143
4.5 Recommendations for Development Policy and Climate
Adaptation ........................................................................... 156
4.6 Assessment of strengths and weaknesses ................................ 158
4.7 References .......................................................................... 159
Chapter 5 Climate Change: Three Hotspots of Human Mobility ................ 165
5.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 166
5.2 Data and Methods ................................................................ 171
5.3 The Case Studies .................................................................. 175
5.3.1 Mexico and Central America ............................................... 175
5.3.2 Mozambique: The Double Blow of Flooding and Drought ........ 178
5.3.3 The Mekong: Flooding and the Threat of Sea Level Rise ......... 184
5.4 Policy considerations: How best to safeguard those displaced? ... 187
5.5 References .......................................................................... 189
Chapter 6 Conclusions ....................................................................... 195
6.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 196
6.2 Assessment of Spatial VA Approaches ..................................... 196
6.2.1 Chapter 2: Climate change hotspots mapping ....................... 196
6.2.2 Chapter 3: The vulnerability of global cities to climate
hazards ........................................................................... 199
6.2.3 Chapter 4: Climatic, biophysical and socioeconomic factors
affecting malnutrition ........................................................ 201
6.2.4 Chapter 5: Climate change – three hotspots of human
mobility ........................................................................... 202
6.3 Assessment of the PNAS Framework ....................................... 204
6.3.1 General assessment .......................................................... 205
6.3.2 Utility of the PNAS Framework in the Context of this
Dissertation ...................................................................... 208
6.4 The Way Forward ................................................................. 209
6.4.1 Trends in Vulnerability Assessment and Spatial Approaches .... 211
6.4.2 Stakeholder Engagement ................................................... 212
6.4.3 Spatial Data Needs ............................................................ 213
6.4.4 Conveying Uncertainty to Policy Audiences ........................... 218
6.4.5 Recommendations for Spatial VA Planning ............................ 221
6.5 Mapping the Unmeasurable? .................................................. 223
6.6 References .......................................................................... 225
Summary .......................................................................................... 235
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Samenvatting .................................................................................... 237
ITC Dissertation List ........................................................................... 239

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