Guest post by Annabel Coplan, KLA's Summer 2024 Climate Analysis Intern.
This summer, I was a Climate Analysis Intern at KLA as part of my studies at Boston University focusing on Environmental Analysis and Policy. An area that my internship touched on that I found both interesting and so relevant to my work and our world is the notion of social vulnerability. I wanted to share a bit about what that is, how it's measured, and why it's a critical piece of climate action and resilience planning.
Why Social Vulnerability?
Climate change is nondiscriminate in the reach of its effects – however, climate impacts vary depending on certain factors. For example, depending on region, coastal communities are hit the hardest by monsoons and sea level rise, while communities in deserts suffer the most severely from drought, wildfires, and extreme heat related hazards. And when you drill down to the community level, you find plenty of disproportionate impacts. People experiencing homelessness are vulnerable to extreme temperatures and storms. The elderly and young are vulnerable to health concerns like asthma, heart disease, and heat stroke made worse by climate change. Furthermore, these impacts compound along socio-economic status and racial identities: those with less resources are less able to protect themselves and their assets from disasters, and less able to recover from damage after disaster events. 
What is Social Vulnerability?
Social vulnerability refers to factors that impact the ability of communities to lessen disaster effects, prepare for disasters, respond to emergencies, and recover from damage. Some of the ways to measure social vulnerability include socioeconomic status, household composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. However, the most vulnerable people are anyone whose needs are not sufficiently considered in the planning of local response and relief efforts.
During my time at KLA, I explored the Center for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), and Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CJEST) Database. When researching indicators such as:
- living in mobile homes
- hearing or sight impaired
- single-parent households
- ethnic and Tribal identities
I learned how the goals, strategies, and actions KLA recommends to local governments can account for the breadth of experiences.
My Work at KLA
This summer, I researched SVI resources to incorporate its principles into Climate Vulnerability Assessments and action planning for our local government partners. For example, for the city of Buffalo, New York, we found socially vulnerable populations in nearly every tract, particularly seniors and those experiencing homelessness, according to respondents of a KLA survey.
Within these resources, I found indicators of social vulnerability, such as:
- Households without a vehicle
- Populations aged over 65 or under 18 years old
- Limited English spoken
- Households experiencing housing burden (& other chronic economic stressors)
- Houses without central air conditioning/heating
I linked their correlations to climate hazards like extreme temperatures (heat and cold), intense storms, and flooding, among others. Then, the Climate Analysis Team evaluated census data from the aforementioned sources and statistically calculated the most extremely impacted census tracts with a city. These tracts could then be identified as areas of high priority for the local government in order to improve the capability to respond to and recover from climate emergencies in an equitable way. This analysis will be included in the City of Buffalo’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment, and Municipal Climate Action Plans; plus, I helped to code a tool that can map and print out the extreme tract information for any input city.
Plus, I helped to code a tool that can map and print out the extreme tract information for any input city, using the data science programming language called "R". Our R-printed Map of Buffalo census tracts with red tracts indicating those with extreme percentages of households with no vehicle. This is just one example of the vulnerability indicators we explored for the project.
While researching, I avoided assuming individuals share the same risks based on group characteristics. Factors like race, ethnicity, income, or education don't inherently determine someone's ability to respond in emergencies, and the mix of traits may make them more capable in some situations and needing assistance in others (Flanagan et al 2011). It helped me realize the importance of community engagement in understanding the specific needs of each city. Attending an advisory group meeting in Barrington, RI displayed stakeholders from all walks of life contributing to their climate action plan, emphasizing the fluidity and personalization of municipal considerations.
Intersectionality
These equity considerations are necessary for efficient resource allocation and adequate community response and assistance. Intersectionality describes coalescing and overlapping social identities that may be both empowering and oppressing. I spent this summer mapping some of the vast array of identities to understand the geographical dispersal of indicators, information necessary for intersectional identification. For Buffalo, extreme cold could be fatal for an elder with health complications and no vehicle access – each identity must be considered in the context of each other for the City to know where to provide specific support, such as mass transit for evacuation, emergency medical or food kits, and training.
Yale Environmental Fellow Cam Humphrey puts it succinctly: “We all come from different backgrounds and upbringings, we share different cultures, we have different wants and needs. We will never be uniform, but an intersectional approach makes us unified. With unity comes solidarity, and with unity comes agency, and if we are united, we can collectively put an end to the drivers of climate change and begin to create a climate-just world.”
This collectivity and unity are reflected in climate solutions that are sustainable, and thus, intersectionally inclusive. I find this essential to a just future, and by including SVI in analysis and action plans, KLA can increase accessibility in electrification efforts, implement more successful educational campaigns, and create a better future for all.
Annabel Coplan was KLA's Summer 2024 Climate Analysis Intern.
Resources and Research Sources
Center for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry Index
Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool
Birkmann, J., E. Liwenga, R. Pandey, E. Boyd, R. Djalante, F. Gemenne, W. Leal Filho, P.F. Pinho, L. Stringer, and D. Wrathall (2022) Poverty, Livelihoods and Sustainable Development. Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1171–1274, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.010.
Kingsley, M., & EcoHealth Ontario (2019). Commentary - Climate change, health and green space co-benefits.
Röbbel, Nathalie (2016) Green spaces: An invaluable resource for delivering Sustainable Urban Health. United Nations. United Nations.
