Researchers from the University of La Laguna, in collaboration with the Government of the Canary Islands, are working on the first viewer of socioeconomic, demographic and environmental vulnerabilities of the Archipelago. The tool will identify the territories and groups most exposed to the effects of climate change.
The research group Postgrowth in Insular Environments (Pensares), led by Professor Serafín Corral, has initiated the development of the first viewer of socioeconomic, demographic and environmental vulnerabilities in the Canary Islands. The tool, still in development, will allow administrations and citizens to accurately identify the areas and groups most exposed to the effects of climate change in the Archipelago.
Data with municipal and census resolution
The viewer will provide information with municipal resolution, by census section and even at lower scales, based on future climate scenarios. This will allow for analysis of where the most elderly populations, households with greater socioeconomic vulnerability, or areas with the greatest inequalities will be concentrated. The tool will be available for public consultation, facilitating transparency and citizen participation in climate adaptation planning.
Four problems in current assessments
The study, published in the scientific journal Climate Risk Management, identifies four problems that affect the quality and usefulness of current vulnerability assessments: the strong dependence on census data, the bias towards the resident population (which may exclude other exposed groups), the lack of systematic validation of methodologies, and the disconnection between the spatial scale of analyses and the scale at which adaptation measures are applied. Researchers believe these limitations can reduce the ability of current methodologies to reflect the real vulnerabilities of the population and affect both climate risk management and the allocation of resources for adaptation.
A tool for local planning
The viewer will allow Canary Island municipalities and councils to plan their adaptation policies with concrete and updated data. For example, a municipality will be able to know which neighborhoods have a higher concentration of elderly people and, therefore, are more vulnerable to heatwaves, or which agricultural areas are more sensitive to drought. The tool will also serve to prioritize investments in green infrastructure or early warning systems. The viewer is expected to be operational in the coming months and will be updated periodically with new climate and demographic data.
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