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Abstract |
The Chapel Street Precinct is a busy commercial and residential corridor in the City of Stonnington Local Government Area (LGA) located in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Authorities and planners in the LGA are interested in understanding how the changing climate affects the socioeconomic environment of the region. By considering existing climate hazards (such as extreme heat, flood and water availability), infrastructure, and demographic information in the region together with future projections of climate change and demographic changes, a Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index (SVI) was created at a Mesh Block scale to better identify relatively high-risk Mesh Blocks in the region. The climate projections under medium and high future emission scenarios (i.e., representative concentration pathways (RCP)) as per IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) fifth assessment report (AR5), RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 respectively for 30-year epochs around 2030, 2050 and 2070 were used in the SVI development. The current-day scenario is considered under Baseline conditions for demographic and asset information representing present-day conditions, whereas the baseline climate dataset considers the climate for the 30 year period 1991-2020 to best represent the present-day climate. The multi-model mean of the future climate projections from 6 different climate models were obtained from the Victoria’s Future Climate tool (https://vicfutureclimatetool.indraweb.io), developed by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Data61 together with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) under Data61’s INDRA framework (https://research.csiro.au/indra/). A version of INDRA is currently under development to allow map-based interactivity, experimentation and scrutiny of the vulnerability indices and their subcomponents across the study region. The SVI was created using a weighted indicator approach utilising a range of indicators belonging to 3 categories, exposure, susceptibility, and baseline adaptive capacity. The indicators were first normalised and the final SVI was given a score between 0-1 for each Mesh Block. The worst levels of vulnerability were observed to be for the RCP8.5 2070 scenario. In general, the RCP8.5 scenarios indicated a worse outcome compared to the RCP4.5 scenario. The area along Chapel Street within the precinct which is a densely built-up area high in population was found to be the most vulnerable area in the study region. It is foreseen that decision makers will be able to use the holistic data-driven outcomes of this study to make better informed decisions whilst adapting to climate change. |
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