Characterizing Spatial Variability of Climate‐Relevant Hazards and Vulnerabilities in the New England Region of the United States

摘要

Weather and climate have substantial effects on human health. While much is known about how morbidity and mortality are affected by moderate‐to‐extreme heat, poor air quality, and heavy precipitation individually, less is known about the cumulative occurrence of these climatic hazards, and the extent to which they spatially overlap with community‐scale vulnerabilities. Specifically, there is interest in determining whether individuals living in places with the highest exposure to multiple health hazardous climatic conditions are also more vulnerable to having negative health outcomes. Presented here is a spatial analysis of the distribution of health‐relevant climatic hazards and social vulnerabilities across the New England region of the northeastern United States. We show that the frequency of excessive heat days, heavy precipitation days, and ozone (O_(3)) and fine particulate matter (PM_(2.5)) exceedances during the warm seasons (May–September) from 2009 to 2014 have distinct spatial distributions and are statistically significantly correlated across space with indicators of social vulnerability. We further quantify an integrated measure of the hazards and vulnerabilities to illustrate the spatial heterogeneity of overall risk, as well as to demonstrate how the choice of spatial scale influences the identification of high‐risk areas. These methods are transferrable to other locations and contexts, which could be of utility not only to geographers and epidemiologists, but also to policymakers tasked with allocating public health resources to populations at greatest risk of weather‐ and climate‐related health effects. Plain Language Summary It is well established that extreme heat, air pollution, and heavy rain can have negative effects on public health and that certain populations are particularly susceptible to these impacts. However, little attention has been given to how the frequency of these different types of hazards are distributed across space and whether they tend to cluster in places where people are more vulnerable to their negative health effects. In this paper, we examine weather and air pollution in New England and apply a method for identifying communities that have both frequent climate‐related hazards and particularly vulnerable populations. Our applications are transferrable and expandable to other locations and hazards of interest, and they are of use both to researchers and decision‐makers aiming to assess and reduce weather‐ and climate‐related risks to public health. Key Points Health‐relevant climatic hazards and social vulnerabilities are spatially differential and not independent An integrative “climatic risk index” helps identify communities with both frequent climatic hazards and relatively high vulnerability The choice of spatial scale affects identification of communities or regions at greatest risk