Overview
Megacities are hotspots of climate change vulnerability and face significant social and institutional challenges to adaptation. The MEGADAPT project addresses the challenge of reducing vulnerability under climate change to increased flooding, chronic water scarcity, and associated health outcomes in Mexico City, one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Residents, businesses and public agencies in megacities respond to the impact of flooding, scarcity and health outcomes in disparate and often uncoordinated ways across the metropolitan area. Their responses impact the hydro-climatic system that generates hazardous conditions through their modifications of the built environment and the biophysical landscape. The project produces an integrated dynamic model – MEGADAPT – for use in Mexico City, but with applicability to climate risk adaptation in complex urban environments across the globe. The project explores how different scenarios of changes in climatic extremes combine with dispersed actions of specific populations in response to vulnerability (e.g., changes in land use or infrastructure) to produce cross-scalar feedbacks that alter the distribution of vulnerability in the megacity. As a decision-support tool, MEGADAPT enables decision-makers to test how altering risk management priorities or the geographic focus of interventions under changing climatic conditions affect social equity and overall risk outcomes.
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