U Georgia Study - Atlanta, Coastal Counties Likely To Bear Brunt Of Warmer World
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“We are seeing increases in extreme events and they affect our economy, security and property,” said Shepherd, who is president of the AMS and is KC’s doctoral adviser. The Center for American Progress pegged costs from extreme events in 2011 and 2012 alone at $188 billion.
But what’s unique about KC’s research is her pairing of climate and weather extreme data with demographic information to try to map out who’s most vulnerable in Georgia.
“I wanted to look at the biophysical part and the social part,” said KC, who is from Nepal. She presented her research last month at the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) annual meeting in Baltimore, Md.
Her maps suggest that city dwellers are most vulnerable. A handful of metro Atlanta counties scored highest on her measure of climate change vulnerability and such vulnerability has been increasing as decades go by. But coastal communities such as Savannah may also be at high risk, she discovered when she modified her index to take into account two more factors, the percent of land in each county susceptible to flooding and the percent of its land in impervious surface such as concrete.
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http://onlineathens.com/uga/2013-04-13/climate-change-could-hit-atlanta-hardest-uga-research-predicts
