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Assignment #3: Outline Background argument for Research Q/H,
Research Q/H & Aims, & Methods
Title
Shopping Centers Climate Resilience: From Static to Dynamic Climate Adaptation
Introduction:
The head of the United Nations Disaster Reduction Office stated that environmental
disasters are becoming the ““new normal” that the world will have to deal with if we don’t speed
up curbs on global warning”. Also, these environmental disasters represent a reminder of our
infrastructure systems vulnerability particularly our commercial building stock system represented
here by the shopping centers system.
Climate change is creating new challenges for both corporations and citizens, certainly,
forcing a reconsideration of climate adaptation in response to social-ecological system changes
(Walker et al. 2004). In this context of climate change uncertainties, “resilience” is the analytical
approach that can contribute to a new corporate climate adaptation, help explore alternative
development pathways and address equity and constraints of responses.
Research Significance & Objectives
Shopping centers have been constructed through a static vision and have numerous deficiencies as
far as economic, social and environmental realms are concerned. For instance, some of these flaws
are: 1) “inability to adapt to “sudden shock” (economic and climate change), 2) social and
environmental realms are put on the back burner, 3) social inequity since only specific social strata
are targeted, 4) energy consumption and inefficient use of resources, 5) urban heat island effect
due to large swaths of parking lots, and 6) large carbon footprint through the auto-use dependency”
(Austipa, 2010).
In this context, hence, addressing these deficiencies, especially the inability to adapt to climate
change sudden shocks, have a critical significance for the global fight against climate change and
for developing resilient communities and cities as well as given the sector importance in the U.S.
economy, in the cities built infrastructure and on the communities.
The proposed research study has the potential to revaluate the shopping centers climate risks and
adaptation strategies by using the resilience framework. In fact, the research study is designed to
integrate climate change present and future uncertainties with the system’s exposure and
sensitivity in order to assess its vulnerability and adaptive capacity. The results of this research
study will lead to a much richer understanding of shopping centers system roles in the context of
the climate uncertainties.
Hence, by understanding the role of climate resilience in re-generating shopping centers and
addressing its deficiencies, the system could be a model for exploring other systems and create
climate resilient cities as well as provide recommendations on targeted interventions to develop
adaptive capacities and policies for buildings.
Background
1) Climate Change Uncertainty:
Climate variability and change “pose major risks at various levels. Climate change can heighten
the risk of illnesses and injuries, exacerbate many existing health conditions, and change the
patterns of where diseases are transmitted by insects and other vectors. Health is also affected by
the safety and availability of food, water, indoor air quality, and energy, which may be
compromised during and after extreme weather events. Extreme weather events, intense heat
waves, and climate- induced degradation of air and water quality may overwhelm our already
overburdened public health systems. The biggest problems facing the nation is “that people are not
sufficiently aware of their exposure to particular hazards. Such is the case, for example, of many
communities in California that face catastrophic risks from possible levee failures and even
residents who live in coastal communities threatened by major hurricanes” (Goodwin, 2015).
Hence, protecting the public and the infrastructure is an integral part of reducing the climate risks
facing communities.
It’s important to note, also, that “impacts on society from climate change cannot be generalized.
Characteristics of society and places, can make different segments either more vulnerable or more
capable of adaptation. Thus, risk and economic costs will be distributed differently based upon
exposure to impacts and capacity of society members to adjust given new conditions” (Arizona
State Adaption Plan, 2014).
2) Urban Infrastructure:
Around the globe, “people are moving into cities at an astonishing rate. By 2050, there will be 9
billion people on Earth, and a staggering 75 percent of them will live in cities. And cities are in a
precarious position: rapid growth has the potential to make them profoundly unlivable places, at
the mercy of floods, storms and polluted air” (Berke, 2015).
The U.S. city “has a sprawling society, where development, including housing and commerce,
have been at low density, resulting in the consumption of a significant amount of space. This has
resulted in strip malls, huge shopping centers and big parking lots, along with long commutes,
traffic congestion, and air pollution…. However, despite [the] potential benefits, new urban
developments have been woefully ineffective in giving sufficient attention to natural hazards risks.
Actually, the new urbanism development projects are going into high risks locations around the
country, including flood prone areas.” (Beker, 2015).
There are other disturbing conditions in society that also do not bode well for [climate hazards]
risk reduction approaches, including the fact that the nation is reaching the end of the design life
for much of its infrastructure – roads, bridges, storm water systems, dams, and levees, [malls]”
(Galloway, 2013).
Part of the threatened cities’ infrastructure we have shopping centers (retail malls). Actually, they
have been constructed through a static vision and have numerous deficiencies as far as economic,
social and environmental realms are concerned. For instance, some of these flaws are: 1) “inability
to adapt to “sudden shock” (economic and climate change), 2) social and environmental realms
are put on the back burner, 3) social inequity since only specific social strata are targeted, 4) energy
consumption and inefficient use of resources, 5) urban heat island effect due to large swaths of
parking lots, and 6) large carbon footprint through the auto-use dependency” (Austipa, 2010).
Also, in terms of “risk assessments are rare the shopping centers which develop hazards, including
natural disasters, risk assessments, and emergency management plans” (Davis, 2014).
In this context, hence, addressing these deficiencies, especially the inability to adapt to climate
change sudden shocks, have a critical significance for the global fight against climate change and
for developing resilient communities.
3) Resilience as National Priority for the U.S.
Across the United States, communities are understanding the significance of increasing resilience
to climate-related impacts. Hence, the last year, the American president signed an executive order
- Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change to manage climate risks and build
resilience. The executive order has been built upon three pillars: “Human Health and Safety;
Public Use and Enjoyment: climate change impacts on the public’s ability to recreate on e.g.
infrastructure that supports visitor use, such as roads, visitor facilities (e.g., campgrounds, picnic
areas, parking areas, trailheads, etc.), trails, and boat ramps. This may also include impacts to
visitor experiences, such as viewing wildlife and scenery, hunting, fishing, boating, walking and
hiking; Infrastructure and Equipment: Potential climate change impacts when planning,
designing, building, purchasing, leasing, upgrading, maintaining, and decommissioning
infrastructure and equipment. Moreover, the executive order has another component related to
Modernizing Programs to Support Climate Resilience Investment” (Executive order, 2014). In this
context, an Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force was created recommending that
the Federal Government “help communities build resilience to climate change by integrating
adaptation considerations into relevant programs, policies, and guidance. Over the past year, the
Task Force hosted workshops and listening sessions to solicit input from a wide variety of state,
tribal, and local leaders on how the Federal Government can best support local adaptation efforts.
Overwhelmingly, community stakeholders said they need reliable and accessible information to
evaluate their vulnerabilities to climate change and to understand the costs and benefits of taking
action to reduce local risks. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s
(HUD) Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grants encourage grant recipients to integrate
climate adaptation into their regional housing, land use, and transportation planning”
(Conservation Gateway, 2015).
While Federal agencies have made progress in helping communities build resilience to climate
change impacts, much more can be done. In this context, I will attempt to use complex system
thinking to enhance climate change resilience of retail malls. I will assess the malls urban system
in terms of climate resiliency and propose dynamic adaptive strategy to extreme climate
conditions. Therefor, focusing on resilience of complex systems can lead to a different future of
“climate-resilient communities which have the capability to anticipate, prepare for, and recover
from climate impacts on public health and safety, the local economy, and natural resources. Also,
“planning for climate- related impacts is economically advantageous because it reduces the cost
of disaster relief, improves infrastructure safety and reliability, and anticipates changes in
ecosystems and the valuable services they provide” (Arizona State Adaptation Plan, 2014).
Research Question/Hypothesis:
Does the shopping centers system have a climate resiliency? How better it can be?
Specific Aims:
1. Investigate the shopping centers system’s exposures and damages
2. Assess the shopping centers system’s Resilience
3. Determine shopping centers system’s enhanced climate adaptive capacity
Research Design:
1) I will define the study scope by defining the shipping centers system.
2) I conduct modeling for treats according to the SHELDUS (SHELDUS provides the
following information for every loss event: the location, the date, the type of loss
experienced and the type of hazard that triggered the loss). It will determine the
shopping center system’s exposure and the damages that it encounters. In fact, I will
use GIS (from Harvard University) combined with SHELDUS (subscribe to it 100$) in
order to create retail malls climate change hazards maps.
3) Analysis the current shopping centers system resilience. I will start by doing a
“Resilience Assessment” for the shopping centers system using the “Resilience
Alliance” model.
4) Finally, I will design an effective resilience management model through the application
of a dynamic adaptive management using the theory of change. Theory of Change:
The role of TOC is to address and remove the root causes of vulnerability.
Methods:
The study will be conducted following the following steps:
1) Unit of Analysis:
Shopping center, a “concentration of retail, service, and entertainment enterprises designed to
serve the surrounding region. Of nearly 47,000 shopping centers in the United States, about 1,100
are categorized as enclosed malls. Regional malls contain at least two department stores or
"anchor stores" and, depending on population density, attract consumers from within a 20-mi (32
km) radius. Superregional malls, of which about 350 exist, include at least five department stores
and 300 shops and may serve an area of up to a 100-mi (160-km) radius. Open-air shopping
centers are typically anchored by large grocery stores. Another distinction among shopping
centers is location, namely suburban or downtown. In an attempt to revitalize retail sales in central
business districts, many large U.S. cities have built so-called festival-marketplaces, which
combine shopping, entertainment, and sightseeing.” (Columbia University Press, 2012).
Hence, I will specifically focus on the mall designed and managed by Taubman.
The choice of Taubman is based on the fact that they have malls all around the U.S. and they have
a wider impact in terms of the community reach. Also, they are willing to answer my surveys and
I can do interviews with them too.
For the resilience Assessment, I will translate the retail malls to a system. In fact, the framework
for a resilience assessment is constructed around the concept of a system. Yet, in the case of malls
we have a complex socio-ecological (SES). The system (retail mall) is a system embedded in
natural systems governed by social systems. There are interactions among: infrastructure,
environment, institutions and social.
2) GIS & SHELDUS
I will use GIS (from Harvard University) combined with SHELDUS (subscribe to it 100$) in order
to create retail malls climate change hazards maps.
GIS Site License Software Upgrade (For Harvard Affiliates Only)
• ArcGIS Desktop 10.3.1
• Esri CityEngine 2015.1
• Esri Business Analyst for Desktop 10.3.1
• eCognition Developer 9.1
SHELDUS provides the following information for every loss event:
• 1. “The location of where the loss occurred: State, County, and FIPS code
• 2. The date when the loss occurred: begin and end date (day, month, year)
• 3. The type of loss experienced: property and crop damage, fatalities, and injuries
• 4. The type of hazard that triggered the loss: SHELDUS™ hazard category and remarks
(description according to the original source)
• 5. Miscellaneous (where available): named major disaster, Presidential Disaster Declaration
number (PDD), Global Disaster Identifier number (GLIDE)
• The above attributes are available for raw data downloads. Aggregated data will be reduced
temporally (year, month, or quarter), spatially (county or state), or by hazard types
(summed across all hazards or broken down into the SHELDUS™ hazard categories).”
(SHELDUS, 2015)
SHELDUS can be searched for the following hazard types:
• Avlanche
• Coastal
• Drought
• Earthquake
• Flood
• Fog
• Hail
• Heat
• Hurricane/Tropical Storm
• Landslide
• Lightning
• Severe Thunderstorm
• Tornado
• Tsunami/Seiche
• Volcano
• Wildfire
• Wind
• Winter Weather
3) Resilience Assessment:
The resilience assessment “framework starts by using strategic questions and activities to construct
a conceptual model of a social-ecological system that represents a place of interest, along with its
associated resources, stakeholders, institutions, and issues. Building on the conceptual model, the
assessment guides the identification of potential thresholds that represent a breakpoint between
two alternative system states and helps reveal what is contributing to or eroding system resilience.
A resilience assessment can thus provide insight into developing strategies for buffering or coping
with both known and unexpected change.” (Resilience Alliance, 2015).
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Discuss
3.
4.
5.
Consider to whom the valued attributes are important. Would all stakeholders consider biodiversity, for example, to be
a particularly important attribute of the issue(s) you have identified?
Given the main issue(s), what is an appropriate time span over which to examine this system? For example, the time
span may reflect a planning cycle or be determined by a natural cycle. Consider this to be a first approximation to a
relevant time scale, which will be revisited after completing a historical timeline in Section 1.4.
Is the main issue already being actively managed? If so, how effective has this management been? Note that
institutional and governance challenges will be explored in more depth
in Section 4.1.
Discuss
3.
4.
5.
Consider to whom the valued attributes are important. Would all stakeholders consider biodiversity, for example, to be
a particularly important attribute of the issue(s) you have identified?
Given the main issue(s), what is an appropriate time span over which to examine this system? For example, the time
span may reflect a planning cycle or be determined by a natural cycle. Consider this to be a first approximation to a
relevant time scale, which will be revisited after completing a historical timeline in Section 1.4.
Is the main issue already being actively managed? If so, how effective has this management been? Note that
institutional and governance challenges will be explored in more depth
in Section 4.1.
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
System Dynamic:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Multiple States:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Thresholds and Transitions:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Cross Scale Interactions:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Interacting Thresholds and Cascading Changes:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
General and Specified Resilience:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Governance Systems:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Social Networks among Stakeholders:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Acting on the Assessment
Synthesizing the Assessment Findings:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Thresholds and Interactions:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Resilience Based Stewardship:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
Time for Transformation:
(Resilience Alliance, 2015).
4) Adaptive Management:
I will design an effective resilience management model through the application of a dynamic
adaptive management using the theory of change. Theory of Change: The role of TOC is to
address and remove the root causes of vulnerability.