Scientists have released a detailed map that reveals the US counties most at risk for flooding, pollution, chronic disease and other factors linked to climate change.
Researchers at Texas A&M University have created a Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) that shows ‘environmental, health, social, economic and infrastructure effects on environmental level stability’.
The team ranked 70,000 neighborhoods based on inequalities, such as housing and poverty, and climate impacts, such as extreme temperatures and storms.
More than half of the 10 most vulnerable counties are in Louisiana, while the rest reside in Texas, Kentucky and South Carolina.
The map also shows much of the Northeast and nearly all of the Western US at high risk of worsening storms and extreme rainfall.
Scientists have released a detailed map that reveals the US counties most at risk of flooding, pollution, chronic disease and other factors linked to climate change
The team shared the 10 most vulnerable counties: St. John the Baptist, Louisiana; Iberville, Louisiana; Knox, Kentucky; Landry, Louisiana; Dillon, South Carolina; Tangipahoa, Louisiana; Acadia, Louisiana; Floyd, Kentucky; Jefferson, Texas and Whitley, Kentucky.
St. John the Baptist Parish is located on the Mississippi River, about 130 miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, which places the county in a flood zone.
More than 87 percent of St. John the Baptist Parish has been designated a specific flood hazard area by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Jo Banner, a community activist in St. John the Baptist, told Capital B News: ‘We know that our community is not prepared for emergencies at all, the federal government is not prepared, the local parish is not prepared.’
The team developed the tool by combining 184 publicly available data sets to rank more than 70,000 US census tracts.
The direct and indirect impacts of climate change are divided into five risk categories: Health, social and economic, infrastructure, environment and extreme events.
The team shared the 10 most vulnerable counties: St. John the Baptist, Louisiana; Iberville, Louisiana; Knox, Kentucky; Landry, Louisiana; Dillon, South Carolina; Tangipahoa, Louisiana; Acadia, Louisiana; Floyd, Kentucky; Jefferson, Texas and Whitley, Kentucky
The direct and indirect impacts of climate change are divided into five risk categories: Health, social and economic, infrastructure, environment and extreme events
The measures taken by the are divided into Community Baseline and Climate Impacts.
“The long-standing inequalities that shape resilience to climate impacts,” including factors around health and health care, housing, poverty, pollution, land use, infrastructure, and transportation, the researchers shared.
‘How a community is vulnerable to environmental and economic disruptions,’ including the risk of more extreme temperatures and storms, and ways those things can affect health and the economy.’
Dr. Weihsueh Chiu, a professor at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine, said: ‘We first combined the data indicator sets at the smallest most detailed level, then we combined them in the seven domains, and finally we combined them in the overall vulnerability index.
‘This tool is designed to allow people to very quickly move from the overall CVI score to a location’s score based on a single data indicator.
‘This will help people identify potential links, such as the interaction between infrastructure and flood risk.’
The CVI also allows users to search by location to see their overall climate vulnerability and the conditions that shape it – from the quality of housing and access to supermarkets to the proximity of toxic waste sites and the number of deaths from air pollution.
The CVI shows what drives vulnerability, including low prevention of chronic diseases, high exposure to harmful pollutants such as soot, and inadequate access to nutritious food.
Dr. Grace Tee Lewis, senior health scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, who worked with the team, said: ‘The Biden administration has made a historic level of funding available to build towards climate justice and equity, but the right investments must flow to the right places for the greatest impact.
‘The CVI equips and equips communities, policy makers and organizations to proactively address vulnerabilities and improve resilience in the face of a changing climate.’