GIS-based climate change tool to identify vulnerability with implications on social equity

Environmental Public Health Indicators (EPHIs) quantify direct and/or indirect links between environmental hazards, exposure, and health risk. As the effects of climate change are increasingly felt by local first-responder agencies, a health surveillance tool using climate-specific EPHIs downscaled to the local level is needed to provide the necessary level of geospatial precision to identify the public health co-benefits of mitigation and adaptation activities. An EPHI tool piloted in Austin, Travis County, Texas, combines environmental hazard, health, demographic, and policy data in a GIS viewer at the census block group scale to leverage the potential co-benefits of climate change mitigation/adaptation strategies. The regional scan of climate-related environmental hazards found that minorities and socioeconomically challenged populations are migrating out of the urban core to flood-prone areas; along major arterial roadways; and, away from sidewalks, bus stops, and many social services. These populations experience a higher risk than the population as a whole of injury, chronic disease, and mortality attributed to extreme heat events, flooding, and air pollution. An analysis of the spatial distribution of existing local mitigation and adaptation interventions concluded that activities such as tree planting and home weatherization correctly targeted a percentage, but not all, of census block areas with vulnerability risk. The pilot EPHI tool offers an evidence-based mechanism to analyze the public health co-benefits of local programs to vulnerable populations.