3. O RINDA V ULNERABILITY A S SESSMENT

In Orinda, climate change is expected to intensify many existing hazards, such as wildfire and flooding, or create new hazards, such as extreme heat and drought. The Vulnerability Assessment evaluates the projected frequency and severity of these hazards and how these hazards will affect community populations and assets.

3.1 Vulnerability Assessment Method

The Vulnerability Assessment primarily follows the recommended four-step process in the APG: (1) characterizing the community’s exposure to current and projected climate hazards; (2) identifying potential sensitivities and potential impacts to city populations and assets; (3) evaluating the current ability of the populations and assets to cope with climate impacts, also referred to as its adaptive capacity; and (4) identifying priority vulnerabilities based on systematic scoring. Figure 1 presents these steps.

Step 1. Identify Exposure

Step 2. Identify Sensitivities & Potential Impacts

Step 3. Assess Adaptive Capacity

Step 4. Prioritize Vulnerability Scoring

Step 1. Identify Exposure. The goal of the first step of the Vulnerability Assessment is to characterize the community’s exposure to current and projected climate change hazards. The climate change hazards included in the Vulnerability Assessment are drought, extreme heat and warm nights, flooding, human health hazards, landslides, severe weather, and wildfire and smoke. These hazards are discussed in more detail later in this report.

Some of the hazards are compounding climate change effects where one climate change hazard leads to another more severe disaster, also known as “cascading effects.” Figure 2 provides an example of these cascading effects.

Changes in precipitation and temperature