Advanced Operationalization Framework for Climate-Resilient Urban Public Health Care Services: Composite Indicators-Based Scenario Assessment of Khon Kaen City, Thailand

Conventional local public health planning and monitoring are insufficiently addressing the conjugated impact of urban development change and climate change in the future. The existing checklist and index often ignore the spatial-network interaction determining urban public health services in forward-looking aspects. This study offers and demonstrates a climate-resilient operationalization framework for urban public health services considering the interaction between urban development change and climate change across scales. A combination of collaborative scenario planning and tailor-made composite indicators were applied based on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)’s climate risk concept to adhere to local realities and diverse sets of scenarios. The framework was contested in a medium-sized city with a universal health care coverage setting, Khon Kaen city, Thailand. The results show that the coupling of collaborative scenario planning and composite indicators allows local public health care to operationalize their potential impact and climate-resilient targets in the future(s) in multiple service operation aspects. The scenarios assessment outcomes prove that although public health devotion can be fail-safe, achieving climate-resilient targets requires sectoral integration with urban development and health determining domains. Further exploration and disputation of the framework with a wider scale and diversified settings are recommended to enhance their robustness and universality

New methods for local vulnerability scenarios to heat stress to inform urban planning—case study City of Ludwigsburg/Germany

Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives for developing vulnerability scenarios and so-called shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) have been undertaken. Most of these scenarios, however, do not provide sufficient information for local scenarios and local climate risk management. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios for vulnerability at the local scale in order to complement climate change scenarios. Heat stress is seen as a key challenge in cities in the context of climate change and further urban growth. Based on the research project ZURES (ZURES 2020 website), the paper presents a new method for human vulnerability scenarios to heat stress at the very local scale for growing medium-sized cities. In contrast to global models that outline future scenarios mostly with a country-level resolution, we show a new method on how to develop spatially specific scenario information for different districts within cities, starting from the planned urban development and expansion. The method provides a new opportunity to explore how different urban development strategies and housing policies influence future human exposure and vulnerability. Opportunities and constraints of the approach are revealed. Finally, we discuss how these scenarios can inform future urban development and risk management strategies and how these could complement more global or national approaches.Universität Stuttgart (1023

New methods for local vulnerability scenarios to heat stress to inform urban planning—case study City of Ludwigsburg/Germany

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives for developing vulnerability scenarios and so-called shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) have been undertaken. Most of these scenarios, however, do not provide sufficient information for local scenarios and local climate risk management. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios for vulnerability at the local scale in order to complement climate change scenarios. Heat stress is seen as a key challenge in cities in the context of climate change and further urban growth. Based on the research project ZURES (ZURES 2020 website), the paper presents a new method for human vulnerability scenarios to heat stress at the very local scale for growing medium-sized cities. In contrast to global models that outline future scenarios mostly with a country-level resolution, we show a new method on how to develop spatially specific scenario information for different districts within cities, starting from the planned urban development and expansion. The method provides a new opportunity to explore how different urban development strategies and housing policies influence future human exposure and vulnerability. Opportunities and constraints of the approach are revealed. Finally, we discuss how these scenarios can inform future urban development and risk management strategies and how these could complement more global or national approaches.</jats:p&gt