Top Posts
African climate change projects secure major funding
Former French PM urges China, Europe to unite...
NDDC, FOSDO launch tree-planting campaign to address climate...
WHO unveils an ambitious blueprint for action on...
New report shows nearly 900 million poor people...
Lagos to Host 2025 International Climate Change Summit
New study shows overheating world will add 57...
NAICOM urges W’African insurers to invest in climate...
Climate change: Nigeria, development partners launch Net Zero...
Nigeria launches net zero project to fight climate...
EcoNai Newsroom
  • Newsround
  • Nigeria
  • Africa
  • World
World

Scientists develop tools to identify neighbourhoods vulnerable to climate change Scientists at the

by admineconai June 3, 2022
written by admineconai June 3, 2022
737

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an environmental justice lens to help identify neighbourhoods that are vulnerable to climate change.

The new tool, which is expected to help ensure that mitigation and resilience programs reach the people who need them the most, builds from environmental justice research— a key aspect of the federal government’s strategy to manage the adverse effects of climate change.

Till now, scientists were said to have had limited tools to assess and ultimately predict socio-economic risks in environmental events, particularly when multiple forms of vulnerability interact with each other.

Reacting, ORNL’s Christa Brelsford said that climate modellers are very good at telling us exactly when and where bad things are going to happen in the physical world.

“But we also have to think about where the people are,” she said, “Most of the world’s population live in cities and in order to analyze climate risk, we have to think about impacts and vulnerability—and there’s a lot of vulnerability in an urban environment.”

On his part, ORNL project lead Nagendra Singh said that climate modelling has mostly focused on “where things like a one-degree temperature increase will happen, or where there’s going to be more heat waves in our climate models.

Read also:Study shows 80% of vehicles in Rwanda emit Greenhouse Gas

“But we have not stressed the fine details of those impacts—how climate events will disproportionately impact different communities,” he was quoted as saying. “Applying this geodemographic data to the models is a good approach to generating the information needed by decision-makers.”

To develop the tool, the ORNL scientists used microdata from the U.S. census to create a synthetic population, approximating the individual makeup of urban communities to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of neighbourhoods to climate events.

The team also used demographic information such as income level, age, gender, ethnicity and housing from the census databases and generated building characteristics data to determine whether a structure was an office, store, apartment building or another type of structure by applying machine learning techniques to satellite imagery.

They developed and tested the platform using data from the Atlanta metropolitan area to characterize neighbourhoods and then evaluated the potential impacts of urban heat islands across different demographically defined groups.

Story was adapted from PHYS.ORG.

Climate changeScienceToolVulnerability
0 comment 0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
admineconai

previous post
Study shows 80% of vehicles in Rwanda emit Greenhouse Gas
next post
Ajayi appointed head of delegation to UN climate change conference

Related Posts

Former French PM urges China, Europe to unite...

October 22, 2025

WHO unveils an ambitious blueprint for action on...

October 20, 2025

New report shows nearly 900 million poor people...

October 20, 2025

New study shows overheating world will add 57...

October 16, 2025

Heaviest monsoon in a decade kills 458 people...

October 9, 2025

Council releases first fully electric bin lorry

October 9, 2025

Study shows US asthma inhalers produce same emissions...

October 7, 2025

Pope Leo hits out at climate change critics

October 3, 2025

Protesters seek $5tr payment from fossil fuel companies

October 1, 2025

UN official says climate change displaces up to...

September 30, 2025

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Newsletter

Subscribe my Newsletter for new blog posts, tips & new photos. Let's stay updated!

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • Bloglovin
  • Vimeo

@2021 - All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by Eco-Nai+

EcoNai Newsroom
  • Newsround
  • Nigeria
  • Africa
  • World