Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Multi-sectoral vulnerability and risks
Europe as hotspots of climate change impacts and
vulnerabilities. Furthermore, these results also highlight
the risk that multiple climate-related hazards will
extend northwards to central and western Europe in
the coming decades, as has already been pointed out
by previous multi-hazard assessments (e.g. Lung et al.,
2013).
These results are based on a set of regional climate
model simulations under the SRES A1B scenario with
a reference period (1981–2010) and three projected
periods (2020s, 2050s and 2080s). The approach
follows the definition of vulnerability by the disaster
risk community (see Section 1.4). Seven climate-related
hazards have been covered: 'heat waves', 'cold waves',
'droughts', 'wildfires', 'river floods', 'coastal floods' and
'windstorms' (Forzieri et al., 2016). In terms of exposed
assets, the assessment focused on direct damages
to physical infrastructure and distinguished between
the four key sectors 'energy' (power plants related
to coal, gas, nuclear, oil, biomass, hydro, solar and
wind; electricity networks; gas pipelines), 'transport'
(roads, railways, inland waterways, ports, airports),
'industry' (metal, minerals, refineries, chemical, water
and water treatment) and 'social' (education and
health institutions). Climate sensitivity was estimated
semi‐quantitatively based on an expert survey and
literature-based evidence. The three components
(climate hazards, exposed assets and climate
sensitivity) were integrated to derive quantifications of
overall risk. Note that the assessment was based on the
current configuration of assets (i.e. assuming no change
in the current distribution of critical infrastructure)
(Forzieri et al., 2016). A related study assessed the
economic impacts of the projected changes in hazard
exposure on critical infrastructure in Europe (Forzieri
et al., 2015).
6.2.4 An ecosystem service perspective
An alternative perspective to assessing multi-sectoral
impacts and vulnerabilities is to take ecosystem
services as the point of departure, by selecting and
modelling, for each sector considered, one or several
key ecosystem services that are associated with
that sector. The results of the ecosystem service
approach are shown in Map 6.4. When assuming a
low vulnerability scenario (see left panel of Map 6.4),
only very few areas are projected to be vulnerable
to multiple ecosystem services, most notably the
Alps, parts of Scandinavia (provisioning of food and
landscape diversity) and pockets in Hungary and
France (food, landscape diversity and biodiversity).
Map 6.4
Aggregated cross-sectoral vulnerability in the 2050s from an ecosystem service perspective
-30° -20° -10° 0° 10° 20°
'We are the World' scenario
30°
40°
50°
60°
70°
-30° -20° -10°
'Icarus' scenario
0°
10°
20°
30°
40°
50°
60°
70°
60°
60°
50°
50°
50°
50°
40°
40°
40°
40°
0°
10°
20°
30°
40°
0°
10°
20°
30°
40°
Aggregated cross-sectoral vulnerability in the 2050s from an ecosystem service perspective
Number of sectors found to be vulnerable
0 1 2 3 4
5 6
No data
Outside
coverage
0 500 1 000 1 500 km
Source: Adapted from Dunford et al., 2015.
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