Download Peter Hayes – Urban Infrastructure and Climate

Urban Infrastructure and Adaptation
Peter Hayes
November 21, 2008
City Basics
Roughly 75 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions originate in cities; today,
cities that have signed up to ICLEI’s city climate action program account for about
15 percent of these emissions.
Or do they? World Bank uses this figure; but can’t cite a source, except for the IEA.
But the IEA say the figure 75 percent relates to only C02 emissions.
IIED say the figure is actually more like 40 percent of all GHGs from cities
No IPPC city assessment to date
Cities are not players at COP
Whatever their precise emissions, about half of the world’s population—about 3.4
billion people—live in cities, they are also the site where climate impacts, direct
and indirect, will affect most people on the planet, and where at least half of the
adaptation to these impacts must take place.
D. Hoornweg, Cities and Climate Change, the World Bank Perspective,” unpublished
presentation, Bellagio, October 2, 2008;
D. Satterwhaite, cited in “Climate Change - Cities Are The Solution, Not The Problem,”
September 26, 2008, http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/climate_change_cities_are_the_solution_not_the_problem
Coastal Cities Vulnerable
• Most cities are largely unprepared to respond and adapt to climate
change. To date, relatively few cities have investigated localespecific biophysical impacts in any depth or at scales and time
frames salient to current land use and planning activities.
• A survey by the Sydney Coastal Councils Group, for example, found
that less than 30 percent of councils refer to climate change in
planning and management policies, had assessed climate risk or
developed hazard mitigation strategies, and more than 60 percent
had no plans to do so.
• Cities located in the coastal zones that are below 10 meters above
sea level is a small fraction of the world’s land area, but are
inhabited by roughly 10 percent of the world’s population, or about
600 million people, and an even higher fraction of its total urban
population.
Table: Potential Climate Change Impacts On Cities
Higher Temperatures
• Intensified urban heat island, especially during summer nights
• Increased demand for cooling (and thus electricity) in summer
• Reduced demand for space heating in winter
Flooding
• More frequent and intense winter rainfalls leading to riverine flooding and
overwhelming of urban drainage systems
• Rising sea levels, storminess and tidal surges require more barriers, retreat, or
damages
Water Resources
• Heightened water demand in hot, dry summers
• Reduced soil moisture and groundwater replenishment
• River flows higher in winter and lower in summer
• Water quality problems in summer associated with increased water
temperatures and discharges from storm water outflows
Health
• Poorer air quality affects asthmatics and causes damage to plants and buildings
• Higher mortality rates in summer due to heat stress
• Lower mortality rates in winter due to reduction in cold spells
Biodiversity
• Increased competition from exotic species, spread of disease and pests, affecting
both fauna and flora
• Rare saltmarsh habitats threatened by sea level rise
• Increased summer droughts cause stress to wetlands and beech woodlands
• Earlier springs and longer frost-free season affect dates of bird egg-laying, leaf
emergence and flowering of plants
Built Environment
• Increased likelihood of building subsidence on clay soils
• Increased ground movement in winter affecting
underground pipes and cables
• Reduced comfort and productivity of workers
Transport
• Increased disruption to transport systems by extreme
weather
• Higher temperatures and reduced passenger comfort on
public transport
• Damage to infrastructure through buckled rails and rutted
roads
• Reduction in cold weather-related disruption
Business and Finance
• Increased exposure of insurance industry to extreme
weather claims
• Increased cost and difficulty for households and business
of obtaining flood
insurance cover
• Risk management may provide significant business
opportunity
Tourism and Lifestyle
• Increased temperatures could attract more visitors to
coastal cities
• High temperatures encourage residents to leave cities for
more frequent holidays or breaks
• Outdoor living, dining and entertainment may be more
favoured
• Green and open spaces will be used more intensively
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After R. Wilby, “A Review of Climate Change Impacts on the
Built Environment,” Built Environment, 33: 1, 2007, p. 34,
based on London Climate Change Partnership 2002 study
cited by Wilby.
Infrastructure Interdependence
• Inter-network failures: city-wide level (and higher),
networked infrastructure (telecom-energy-transport-first
responders-health system) may experience cascading
failures at critical inter-dependencies between these
networks such that one network may bring down linked
networks.
• Urban risk of concatenated hazards where a primary hazard
leads to secondary hazard (e.g. floods creating watersupply contamination), as well as where natural hazards
trigger technological disasters.
• Climate change impacts could trigger such chains of events
in interconnected networks, or amplify downstream-wind
concatenations.
Infrastructure and climate change, risk assessment for Victoria
Report to Victorian Government March 2007 (CSIRO, Maunsell)
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Executive Summary 1
1.0 Introduction 4
2.0 Likely Future Climate Change 7
3.0 Infrastructure Risk Assessment 15
4.0 Governance Implications 25
5.0 Water Infrastructure Risk Assessment 31
6.0 Power Infrastructure Risk Assessment 39
7.0 Telecommunications Infrastructure Risk Assessment 49
8.0 Transport Infrastructure Risk Assessment 53
9.0 Buildings Infrastructure Risk Assessment 61
10.0 Climate Change Impacts on Infrastructure Adaptation Framework
“Hard” Infrastructure and climate change, risk assessment for Victoria
Report to Victorian Government March 2007 (CSIRO, Maunsell)
• Water
- Water - Storage reservoirs, waterways and irrigation channels
- Sewer - Reticulated sewage systems, trunk sewers and treatment plants
- Stormwater - Drainage assets and land prone to flood
• Power
- Electricity - Power generation and transmission to substations includes power supply peak demand
- Gas and Oil - Extraction, refining and distribution networks
• Telecommunications
- Fixed Line Network - Trunk lines to exchanges
- Mobile Network - Transmission towers
• Transport
- Roads - Main and municipal roads
- Rail - All networks
- Tunnels - All transport tunnels
- Bridges - All transport bridges
- Airports - All airports
- Ports - All jetties, piers and seawall protection
• Buildings
- Buildings and Structures - All residential, commercial, industrial buildings and storage structures
- Urban Facilities -
Bushfires put a state in
meltdown The Australian
January 17, 2007 12:00am
VICTORIANS face days of power
bans - including being
forced to turn off
airconditioners in heatwave
conditions - after the state
was plunged into chaos
yesterday when bushfires
cut the main electricity
transmission line between
Melbourne and New South
Wales.
The shutdown triggered
blackouts across the state
that left more than half a
million homes and
businesses without
electricity, blanked out 1200
traffic lights and disrupted
train services.
Soft Infrastructure
• First Responders (fire, ambulance-hospitals,
police)
• Educational system
• Professional associations
• Community groups
Foresight activities and anticipatory networks
Australian Adaptation Research Networks
• The research investment by the Department of Climate
Change will focus upon strengthening adaptation research
institutional capacity and upon investment in priority research
tasks. The $50 million investment is being structured with 3
prime components:
• up to $10 million to establish and manage a new Climate
Change Adaptation Research Facility (hosted by Griffith
University);
• up to $30 million for specific research projects to support
implementation of the National Adaptation Research Plans
(see Section 1.3 below); and
• up to $10 million to support the activities of Adaptation
Research Networks (as outlined in these guidelines).
Australian Adaptation Research themes:
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Terrestrial biodiversity: encompassing species- and ecosystem-level impacts of climate change and system
adaptive capacities; and implications for biodiversity management strategies
Primary industries: encompassing systemic and industrial-scale impacts of climate change on horticulture,
viticulture, livestock, cropping, intensive and extensive farming practices, forestry; the associated social
and economic impacts; and sector- and region-specific adaptation strategies
Water resources and freshwater biodiversity: encompassing the impacts of climate change on surface and
groundwater inland aquatic and semi-aquatic ecosystems; the associated social and economic impacts of
changed water regimes; and potential adaptation strategies
Marine biodiversity and resources: encompassing the biophysical impacts of climate change and climate
variability on coastal, estuarine and marine ecosystems, including fisheries, and their associated social and
economic impacts and implications for management strategies
Human health: including changes to the entry, range and persistence of vector- and food-borne diseases;
the physical and mental health impacts of heat waves and other extreme events; and the social economic
and management implications of these impacts for the Australian health care system and health services
Settlements and infrastructure: covering the impacts of climate change on coastal settlements; public and
private infrastructure including building and facility design and construction; urban water security;
flooding and stormwater overflow; the social, economic and institutional implications of these impacts
and implications for planning, design, and management and design of settlements and infrastructure
Disaster management and emergency services: implications of changes in frequency and intensity of
extreme weather events for disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
Social, economic and institutional dimensions: Cross-cutting analysis of issues such as methods for
understanding whole-of-economy impacts; affect of social and economic trends on vulnerability to
climate change; understanding and developing adaptation strategies for vulnerable communities,
especially indigenous and remote communities; and institutional challenges in adapting to climate change
Australian Adaptation Research
infrastructure and settlements
Five sub-themes for research on infrastructure and settlements
adaptation specified by the Facility in this theme include:
Network Host: University of NSW
• Impacts of climate change on coastal settlements
• Public and private infrastructure including building, facility
design and construction;
• Urban water security;
• Flooding and storm-water overflow;
• The social, economic and institutional implications of these
impacts and implications for planning, design, and
management of settlements and infrastructure
Key Research Players
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CSIRO Adaptation Flagship
Griffith University Adaptation Research Facility
National University networks…UNSW, RMIT-CCAP, UniSA-ATN, U-Melb
End users
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Victorian Government, Department of Planning and Community Development,
Victorian Government, Department of Sustainability and Environment,
Melbourne City Council,
Committee for Melbourne,
Sydney Coastal Councils,
CSIRO Climate Adaptation National Research Flagship
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ARUP Australia (international engineering and design company),
Cricket Australia,
National Seachange Taskforce,
Westernport Greenhouse Alliance,
National Planning Institute of Australia,
Melbourne Water,
Municipal Association of Victoria,
Public Health Association of Australia,
Coastal Zone Asia Pacific Association,
CH2M HILL,
Water Services Association of Australia.
http://www.secureaustralia.org/
• The Research Network for a Secure Australia (RNSA) is a multidisciplinary collaboration established to strengthen Australia's research
capacity for protecting critical infrastructure (CIP) from natural or human
caused disasters including terrorist acts.
• Sep 2008 workshop on Climate Change-Infrastructure Adaptation Wiki
(CCIA Wiki)
The CCIA Wiki will allow users to identify detailed engineering information and sources, and
use this information to produce detailed impact assessments and evidence-based cost benefit
analysis for adaptation. Specifically, it will provide an easily searchable and cross-referenced
list of publications, references, information, definitions etc relevant to different:
• infrastructure sectors (eg railway)
• climate change variables (eg impact of solar radiation)
• infrastructure element (eg above ground cable degradation under increased solar
radiation)
www.climatechange-infrastructure.org/wiki1
Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Assessment
of Impacts of Climate Change on Australia's Physical
Infrastructure (November 2008)
“Given the complexity of the issues involved, and the imperative for national
coordination, and as a further development of the “National Climate Change
Adaptation Framework”, there is an urgent need to establish national guidelines for
the evaluation, design and planning of infrastructure subject to the effects of
climate change. These guidelines would represent appropriate policy solutions to
climate change adaptation by considering the expected consequences of climate
change and would be assessed within a risk assessment framework. Due
consideration should be given to financial, legal, social, environmental and
emergency management matters.”
At http://www.atse.org.au/?sectionid=128
Unitary Urban Systems
Systems modelling—eg H.T. Odum, emergetics,
later industrial metabolism school
Polycentric, De-Centered Cities
• Due to fracturing and splintering of “unitary cities” based on urban
planning and engineering of largely publicly owned or regulated
integrated infrastructure that offered (more or less) universal access
to these public goods.
• Instead, many cities have been exposed to global economic forces
that led to the liberalization of regulated infrastructure supply
combined with new technology have in turn resulted in the local
unbundling of integrated networks and their simultaneous
integration at a global level in networks that span dozens of cities.
Source: S. Graham, S. Marvin, splintering urbanism, networked
infrastructure, technological mobilities, and the urban condition,
Routledge, London, 2001, pp. 44-45.
Global Cities—new landscape
• Global urban network of networks, a transnational
meta-city
• Shifts
--natural monopoly to competitive or unregulated
oligopolistic supply of infrastructure
--unbundling of integrated networks to distributed
supply infrastructure tailored to individual demand,
with increased range and quality of infrastructural
services for those able and willing to pay
--expanded infrastructure demand side management
options; and reduced infrastructure costs for those
able to connect.
Segmentation of Urban Populations
• many users were unable to afford access on the new terms
or paid very high unit prices for infrastructure services; or
were disconnected due to inability to pay.
• many households and communities were bypassed either
locally, glocally, or virtually
• cities became multiplexed in form or put simply,
incoherent.
• cities also became subject to catastrophic system failure
(for example, Wellington’s power crisis).
Conclusion: many cities are no longer solely contiguous with a
specific geographical site and levers of urban planning and
control over decisions relating to or affected by climate
change may be very limited
Social Vulnerability vs Climate Hazard
“In Indian cities, vulnerability has typically contributed to
overall risk more than hazard exposure has. The most
vulnerable urban residents are the poor, slum and
squatter settlement dwellers, and those who suffer
insecurities. These insecurities arise from: poor
governance; the lack of investment in infrastructure
and in the commons; and strong connections between
the political class, real estate developers and public
agencies.”
A. Revi, 'Climate change risk: an Adaptation and
Mitigation Agenda for Indian Cities', Environment and
Urbanization 20 (1), April 2008
History Matters, Institutions Matter
For example:
Coastal city exposure to climate risk co-evolved with non-climate drivers
of location of coastal cities:
--historical (water-borne logistics, colonial beachheads and metropoles,
poor planning, ineffective urban governance, information failures)
--contemporary competitive drive for cities to gain economically from
globalized service networks in financing, investment, consulting and
trading networks and the locational choices of global corporations.
In many instances, the combined exposure to absolute sea level rise is
combined with groundwater extraction that results in subsidence and
relative sea level rise on which global climatically-induced absolute sealevel rise is super-imposed. Thus, climate change is only part of the story.
Source: D. Satterthwaite et al, Building Climate Change Resilience in Urban Areas and among
Urban Populations in Low- and Middle-income Nations, prepared for the Rockefeller
Foundation’s Global Urban Summit, Innovations for an Urban World, in Bellagio in July 2007,
p. 3; and published as: Adapting to Climate Change in Urban Areas The possibilities and
constraints in low- and middle-income nations, Human Settlements Discussion Paper Series,
online at: http://www.iied.org/HS/topics/accc.html.
Multiple Stressors, Multiple Jeopardies
The IPCC has used the concept of multiple stressor to show how a biological
or physical asset may be stressed simultaneously by climate change and
some other source of stress.
For example, forests may be stressed by climate induced ecological
succession and by acid rain
In urban contexts, the poor are affected by the displacement and structural
adjustment affects of integration into the global economic system as well
as to the extractive behaviors of local political and economic elites and
predatory practices.
Climate change risks are superimposed on their pre-existing vulnerability due
to these social factors.
I prefer to label these combined and overlapping risks that arise from human
institutions “multiple jeopardies” to distinguish them from multiple
stressors that typically apply to biological and physical risks or ecological
degradation.
Urban Poor and Climate Adaptation
• Within this urban population, a large fraction, often the majority, live in
more or less extreme poverty. The category “poor” is a diverse group with
respect to the poverty line, and may be always or usually poor, that is,
chronically poor; or constantly or occasionally (transiently) poor.
• In the low and middle income world, about 0.9 billion urbanites live in
poverty according to UN Habitat estimates (national statistical shortfalls
make a more precise estimate impossible), of whom about 0.65 billion
lack adequate water and 0.8 billion lack adequate sanitation.
Categories are from Hulme, cited in T. Tanner,R. Mitchell, “Entrenchment or
Enhancement: Could Climate Change Adaptation Help to Reduce Chronic
Poverty,” IDS Bulletin, 39, 4, September 2008, p.8.
Estimates are from D. Dodman and D. Satterthwaite, “Institutional Capacity,
Climate Change Adaptation and the Urban Poor,” IDS Bulletin, 39, 4,
September 2008, p. 67.
Urban Poor are Disproportionately Vulnerable
Direct climate impacts on urban poor include:
• direct impacts such as more frequent and more hazardous floods…
• less direct impacts such as the reduced availability of freshwater supplies available to poorer
groups
• indirect impacts such as climate change-related weather events that increase food prices or
damage poorer households’ asset bases.
To which they are more vulnerable because of
• greater exposure to hazards (e.g. through living in makeshift housing on unsafe sites)
• lack of hazard-reducing infrastructure (e.g. drainage systems, roads allowing emergency vehicle
access)
• less adaptive capacity (e.g. the ability to move to better quality housing or less dangerous sites)
• less state provision for assistance in the event of a disaster (indeed, state action may increase
exposure to hazards by limiting access to safe sites for housing)
• less legal and financial protection (e.g. a lack of legal tenure for housing sites, lack of assets, and
insurance
• Less assets
• Less income diversification options
Bypassed, Collapsed, Isolated Cities:
• In many countries, many small and intermediate cities have
been bypassed altogether by these global circuits and in
some cases, collapsed (for example, Mogadishu).
• Other cities have developed giant informal settlements that
lack official means of governance or any local government
and are subject not only to outright wars and high levels of
insecurity, but to migrant inflows and inflows on a massive
scale. Not only is basic infrastructure non-existent or vastly
undersupplied; but local government is corrupt, opaque,
and authoritarian.
• With little infrastructure and local institutions that offer
more maladaptive than adaptive capacity, it is hard to
build climate change resilience in these cities.
Cities as “Climate Crucibles”
Cities are co-evolving with the climate system, both as a
global climate force in their own right as well as
becoming powerful independent actors in international
affairs on a par with many states.
City response to climate change impacts and their
endogenous turmoil is a highly turbulent layer where
local, bottom-up reactive and pro-active adaptation
will churn and interact with global climate change.
At the edge of this chaos, we hypothesize, is an enormous
amount of social learning and innovation for
constructive institutional change.
How To Explore this Complexity?
• Antithesis of a complex systems approach—is bottom-up agentbased modeling
• For example, of port city competition and cooperation and impacts
of CCA
• Inter-city collaboration for adaptation
• The right metaphor for this process is not institutional architecture,
but think-nets, small worlds-network theory, immunological
“swarming” behavior, and other learning strategies that rely on viral
replication for scale and success.
• Fortunately, there are many, many examples to choose from in this
early learning phase of bottom-up, “emergent” adaptation
including the International Council of Local Environmental
Initiatives, the Clinton Foundation’s C40 Large Cities Climate
Leadership Group and Climate Initiative, and others.
• Milan example
Indonesia-Australia
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Tropical cities, sharing and collaboration strategies
Lifeboat cities in extreme worlds
Urban insecurity linkages
Universal needs (eg low grade waste heat desal
technologies; green building certification…)
• Toolkits: eg adaptive building materials calculator
• Municipal mitigation as revenue source separate to
central governments
• Global framework under “transgovernmental” law?
(Anne-Marie Slaughter theory)