Past is key to Future : A Bottom-Up, Place-Based Approach for Spatial Risk Assessment to Support Risk-Informed Planning and Management

Risk-informed management is key to resilient communities and sustainability of hazard-prone areas. This paper, using typhoon hazard as an example, proposes the adoption of a bottom-up, place-based framework for a realistic risk modelling. We introduce an inclusive Typhoon Risk Index based on integration of place-based destructive potential of a typhoon, vulnerability, and resilience adaptability of coastal communities. The study introduces a coupled approach based on spatial distributional models in geographic information systems to map and modelling the risk-hotspots. The results show that more than 60% coastal counties are exposed to typhoon risk in coastal China with above 25% under the highest category of risk. The areas under highest risk harbor more than 50 million people including more than 7 million non-adults (0-14 years) and approximately 2.5 million elderly people (above 65 years). The Pearl-River-Delta region of Guangdong province in southern China is identified (statistically significant) as the hotspot of highest typhoon risk, with a population share of above 35 million and a gross domestic product (GDP) of 120 million, followed by Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in eastern China. The place-based results from our approach are more applicable and relevant to a risk-informed policy/decision making and management in the coastal regions of China particularly from a disaster-risk-reduction (DRR) perspective. The study also provides a set of useful tools within the proposed framework to facilitate the identification of risk/vulnerability hotspots in any given region of the world, particularly in developing countries where data availability is a major constraint for such analysis.