Adaptation of cities for wind-related disasters and climate change
Citation: He Y, Wu B, He P, et al. Wind disasters adaptation in cities in a changing climate: A systematic review. PloS ONE. 2021;16(3):e0248503.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: National Natural Science Foundation of China and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (China).
What is this? In this systematic review, the authors searched for literature discussing wind-related disasters and adaptation measures in cities. They restricted their searches to articles that were open access but did not restrict by language or type of publication. They did their search at the end of 2019 and included 232 studies.
What was found: Four areas of focus were identified: (1) vulnerability and resilience of cities, (2) damage evaluation, (3) response and recovery, and (4) health impacts of wind-related disasters.
Seven cities were most often mentioned in the context of building resilience following disasters caused by natural hazards and the risks of climate change: New York, New Orleans, Houston, Hong Kong, Galveston, Shanghai, and Tacloban.
Adaptation measures were categorized into three main topics: (1) structural and physical (e.g., ecosystem, built environment), (2) social (e.g., educational, behavioural), and (3) institutional (e.g., economic, government policies).
Implications: The authors of this review concluded that policy makers should embrace up-to-date climate change research to defend cities against short-term disasters and to take precautions against long-term changes; and that they should develop hybrid adaptation measures that combine hard (structural and physical measures) and soft (social and institutional measures) adaptation measures, with special attention on the soft side.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence/geographical location, socioeconomic status, education, and age.
This summary was prepared by Yasmeen Saeed, checked by Cristián Mansilla and Jawaria Karim, and finalized by Mike Clarke.
Evidence Gaps: This review identified one main gap:
| Evidence gap | Classification | Population/ setting identified | Study type |
| ‘’Research could improve by conducting a more detailed full-text analysis to establish actual relationships between cities and adaptation measures in the future. The matching of cities and the year in which disasters occurred as well as when the study was published could also be included in the future’’ | More research is needed | Wind disasters adaptation | N/A |
| ‘’Further studies could be conducted by making use of the results from flood mapping. For example, flood risk mapping and social indicators are combined to examine the most exposed population’’ | More research is needed | Flood mapping | N/A |
These gaps were identified up to October 2019 with no geographical restrictions. An updated search was conducted on 28 November 2023 to check if new studies have filled this gap, finding:
- No more recent systematic review addressing the same or a broader question.
- 1 study that examined the trends and impacts of coastal flooding in the Western Cape province of South Africa might contribute to partially filling gap one.
This evidence gap was identified, extracted, and classified by Ana Beatriz Pizarro and Jawaria Karim. Updated searches were carried out by Jane McHugh. Ana Beatriz Pizarro assessed the search results to address the gaps, and the findings were checked and finalized by Cristián Mansilla. The methodology we used to assess each gap can be found here.