Evaluating the cascading impacts of sea level rise and coastal flooding on emergency response spatial accessibility in Lower Manhattan, New York City

摘要

Highlights?Coastal flood and SLR lead to proportionate/non-linear impacts on emergency service.?Emergency accessibility depends on the station positioning and traffic conditions.?Responders should be prepared for a potential extreme flood in a changing climate.AbstractThis paper describes a scenario-based approach for evaluating the cascading impacts of sea level rise (SLR) and coastal flooding on emergency responses. The analysis is applied to Lower Manhattan, New York City, considering FEMA’s 100- and 500-year flood scenarios and New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC2)’s high-end SLR projections for the 2050s and 2080s, using the current situation as the baseline scenario. Service areas for different response timeframes (3-, 5- and 8-min) and various traffic conditions are simulated for three major emergency responders (i.e. New York Police Department (NYPD), Fire Department, New York (FDNY) and Emergency Medical Service (EMS)) under normal and flood scenarios. The modelling suggests that coastal floodin