The climate vulnerability index shows the intersection of increasing climate risks and long-term health, social, environmental and economic conditions so state and local officials can target the most effective solutions for their communities.
No community is safe from climate change’s effects. And understanding the impacts and drivers of those complex changes can be challenging for state and local governments with limited resources and staff. Without data on how climate change impacts their communities, it can be difficult for policymakers to implement effective solutions. To help ease the process, researchers developed a new web-based tool that provides hard data on local climate risks to help inform policy or funding decisions aimed at increasing climate resilience.
Developed by Texas A&M University, the Environmental Defense Fund and Darkhorse Analytics, the climate vulnerability index maps details from 184 datasets across 70,000 census tracts. It displays a range of community vulnerability data, such as health, socioeconomic, environment and infrastructure conditions and identifies existing burdens like limited access to health care or unfair housing practices that affect a community’s climate resilience. The map also features data on climate change impacts, such as the number of heat-related deaths or the frequency and severity of wildfires in an area.
With the site’s combined community vulnerability and climate risk data, state and local officials can better grasp the specific drivers of local climate vulnerability, said tool co-developer Weihsueh Chiu, a professor at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Route Fifty
By Kaitlyn Levinson,
Assistant Editor, Route Fifty
OCTOBER 4, 2023