POLICY BRIEFING
Mapping climate disadvantage in
England
4 August 2015
Steven Bland, LGiU Associate
Summary

A new online mapping tool has been developed by the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation (JRF) in partnership with Climate UK, the Environment Agency and
Manchester University. It aims to help local decision makers understand at a fine
level of spatial detail the relationship between climate change and social
vulnerability/disadvantage. It forms part of the Climate Just online portal –
containing a range of resources to support local groups understand and integrate
a socially-just approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The mapping tool can be used to overlay various climate change impacts (flood
risk, heat risk) with a range of socio- spatial vulnerabilities (eg age, income, social
isolation) at the neighbourhood scale. The online portal contains a wealth of more
guidance and information to get the most from the mapping tool. The
recommendation is to read this briefing, briefly! And then get stuck in to the map
tool itself

This will be relevant not just to those working in environmental or sustainability
units, but also those in social welfare, housing, healthcare, spatial planning and
community engagement. It is relevant for a wide range of local authorities; in both
urban and rural areas, and those with flood management and/or coastal
management responsibilities. The mapping tool itself only covers England.
“Climate change is a route through which deprivation can be worsened.”
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Briefing in full
Socio-spatial vulnerability and climate disadvantage
Climate change will affect communities differently, depending on their personal,
social and environmental situation. Local authority responses to climate change can
also exacerbate or reduce existing social inequalities. This justice angle to climate
change is explored in this LGiU briefing on a study by the JRF entitled “Climate
Change and Social Justice: A Review”. It defines climate justice as being “about
ensuring collectively and individually that we have the ability to prepare for, respond
to and recover from climate change impacts, as well as the policies to mitigate or
adapt to them by taking account of existing vulnerabilities, resources and
capabilities”
In this sense a socially just response to climate change requires that local authority
programmes aiming to increase energy efficiency, change mobility patterns, react to
flooding events, or promote healthy lifestyles etc- do so in a way that does not
increase social inequality. The aim should be that policies designed to respond to
climate change also strengthen wider social development goals. There are examples
of this already happening in local authorities – in fuel poverty programmes, for
example – where there is a clear climate-poverty link. But traditionally, climate
response decision making has been heavily reliant on scientific information showing
geographical patterns of exposure to climate risks. It has not necessarily taken into
account the underpinning social factors that determine the health and well-being
impacts of these events.
Vulnerability is the degree to which external stresses impact on well-being.
Vulnerability depends on the interactions between personal (eg health/age),
environmental (eg green space, building quality) and social factors (income,
neighbourhood cohesion, isolation). In the mapping tool vulnerability is represented
spatially and is called socio-spatial vulnerability
Climate disadvantage refers to the combination of socio-spatial vulnerability with
exposure to current or future predicted climate hazards, such as heatwave or
flooding events. The JRF summarises it so:
Exposure to climate hazard + socio-spatial vulnerability = climate disadvantage.
The mapping tool therefore maps all three in different map layers. The tool helps to
bring together a wide range of data types. For example, age, tenure, social networks,
mobility, local environmental or building characteristics and past flooding events are
all included, none of which make it into the index of multiple deprivation, for example.
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Why this is relevant to local authorities, local care
providers & others: related legislation
Flood and Water Management Act 2010: The act requires LA’s to take account of
the safety and wellbeing of people and ecosystems, reduce potential risks for future
generations, and improve resilience.
Health and Social Care Act 2012: Tackling inequality is an interwoven theme.
Many of the determinants of health and wellbeing are linked to social vulnerability
and therefore climate disadvantage (eg socio-economic determinants of health such
as housing quality, income, age etc)
Civil Contingencies Act 2004: Identifies LA’s as one of the key organisations for
developing and implementing emergency plans
Heatwave plan for England – while non-statutory it encourages LA’s to play a role
in helping people reduce their exposure to heat, and to ensure that service provision
is resilient to cope with extreme heat events
Key Questions
The Climate Just website portal contains a series of “Key Question” sections well
worth reading before looking at the tool itself. Some of the key questions are briefly
summarised below, but more can be found here.
Who is vulnerable?
In any one area, a similar hazard (eg a 1 in 10 year flood) will affect different people
differently. The degree of social vulnerability to potentially the same climatic impact
is determined by 3 key influencers:

Sensitivity – determining a person’s susceptibility to the impact – eg age

Exposure – determining the extent to which the impact is immediately felt - eg
living in a top-floor flat, or in a house with air conditioning

Adaptive capacity – determining the ability to adapt – eg access to medical
establishments, income or mobility.
The three groups most likely to be climate disadvantaged include:

Older people. Especially from heat impacts, but also as a result of increased
concentrations of older people living in coastal areas

Those living in low-income households. Are less able to bounce-back from
flooding or other disasters.
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
Social/private rented housing tenants. Often have less control over
implementing actions to protect themselves from a changing climate or reduce
energy use, or in post-flooding recovery.
An entire section of the website is devoted to each of the key vulnerable groups: Low
income, older people, tenants, socially isolated, low mobility, lived in an area a short
time.
Which places are disadvantaged? Using the climate
just tool
The climate just tool is a mapping tool which aims to:

Improve understanding of climate change at neighbourhood scale

Facilitate adaptation planning and decision-making

Support the spatial targeting of adaptation responses
It focuses predominantly on two types of climatic changes: heat (both now and
predicted temperatures in the 2050’s) and flooding (both current risk (2011) and
previous risk (2001). The tool has produced national maps which we turn to first:
The national picture of climate disadvantage
The most concentrated vulnerabilities are found in large urban and coastal areas. In
urban areas, the heat island affect is well documented but is not spatially consistent.
Within a particular geography, socio-economic and environmental characteristics –
such as access to green space – determine individual communities’ vulnerability to a
heat event. For example – dense urban areas with little green space are often places
of concentrated social vulnerabilities (eg low-income areas)
The most climate disadvantaged coastal areas are South Wales, North West
Scotland, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, East Anglia and the Thames Estuary as –
because of their combination of exposure to coastal flooding hazard, and high levels
of vulnerability brought about by socio-economic deprivation.
River and coastal flooding: 7% of English neighbourhoods are extremely flood
disadvantaged, with Yorkshire and Humber faring worst.
Surface water flooding: 5.6% of neighbourhoods are extremely flood
disadvantaged for a 1 in 30 flood probability – with London the worst at risk
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Figure 1 Neighbourhood-scale flood disadvantage from surface water related flooding in
England (1 in 30 years) (a) socio-spatial vulnerability (b) surface water flood hazard-exposure
and (c) the combination of (a) and (b) to identify flood disadvantage (2011)
High temperature: In general risk is concentrated in largest urban centres, with the
North of England less at risk than the South.
These risks interact with each other: 60% of neighbourhoods that are extremely
vulnerable to coastal and river flooding (2011), are also extremely vulnerable to high
temperatures.
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Using the tool
This video and the detailed user guide are good places to start before you dive into
using the tool. In summary:
 3 climate variables are used: river/coastal flooding, surface water flooding (in 2001
and 2011) and heat (in 2050 based on current predictions of increasing
temperatures)
 There are 3 maps per climate impact: one showing hazard exposure, one showing
socio-spatial vulnerability, and one showing the combination of these two: climate
disadvantage
 Socio-spatial vulnerability maps are based on 5 dimensions: Sensitivity, Enhanced
exposure (physical environment attributes which enhance or offset the degree of
impact felt), Ability to prepare, Ability to respond, Ability to recover
 Each dimension has a range of domains/indicators underpinning those, which are
also mapped (eg age, income, building characteristic etc)
As the user, you can therefore explore all of these variables and indicators, exploring
not only what the climate disadvantage might be in a particular neighbourhood, but
also the reasons behind it.
A step-guide for using the tool:

Use the map to profile your local area

What kinds of neighbourhoods are in your area? What particular issues exist?
Where are people most vulnerable?

Verify the data with local knowledge/other data sources

Discuss themes and draw up priorities in partnership with local groups. The tool
can be a useful platform for holding discussions with stakeholders about local
vulnerabilities and potential solutions/responses

Review the recommended actions and specific actions for vulnerable groups on
the Climate Just online portal.
The site does warn against some of the limitations of using the tool- advising users
to make use of a range of datasets and other knowledge bases (eg local interviews
and community knowledge). In general, they warn against assuming that the broad
characteristics of an area explain the characteristics of all the individuals within it.
Some indicators are not available at a fine enough neighbourhood scale. Flooding in
particular is often highly geographically constrained – so the relationship between
vulnerable people and exact areas of flood risk may not be represented by the map.
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What actions support resilience and who needs to
do what?
The website portal contains a number of recommended actions for local authorities
and goes into useful detail. General recommended actions include:
1. Understand your case for action: Why is climate justice important for your local
authority?
2. Consider what existing social policies can help to address social vulnerability
3. Ensure co-operation between departments and agencies
4. Raise awareness and target actions at specific vulnerable groups
5. Work in partnership with local communities to understand local needs and
solutions
6. Develop concrete plans with specific actions and targets – including those
specifically targeted at vulnerable groups: eg raising awareness in the health and
social care services to support older people and those with special needs, providing
information to private landlords, and provision of green infrastructure to improve
neighbourhoods where people are climate disadvantaged.
As well as these general recommended actions, a comprehensive adaptation
planning process can be useful to institutionalise and embed climate change risks
and vulnerabilities into service delivery – in a way that works in partnership with all
the relevant players and stakeholders locally. This adaptation planning guidance can
be found here, but a number of important principles are worth noting:
 Take an integrated approach that involves all departments and local partners
 Use existing tools but complement them with locally-specific information
 Work hard at targeting communication in a way that people understand,
especially vulnerable groups
 Be flexible; actions and solutions may need to change over time
 Learn from others
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Case studies of local authority action
To help the learning process, a number of case study resources are provided in the
portal:
Climate change action planning, Wigan: showing how to use the map tool to
strengthen adaptation planning
Climate justice, environmental hazards and community resilience, Newcastle:
Showing hot to map flood disadvantage data to identify relationships between
vulnerability and hazards in a particular area
Community flood warden scheme, Doncaster: Showing a resilience-building
response to flooding in 2007
Extreme weather mapping tool, Leeds: showing how the data was used to create
a local GIS map tool to help Leeds City Council partners prepare for extreme
weather events
Social vulnerability assessment, Hampshire: showing how to use the map tool
and its data to develop your own, even more localised version of the data – if data
specialists are available
Comment
Core Cities has described the tool as “a fantastic resource that will enable councils to
understand the climate disadvantage in their area and respond accordingly, planning
for a changing climate whilst also creating a more equal society”. The tool is indeed
an amazing achievement – giving a scale of detail for local planners that I have not
come across before. The map does require time to explore, however, and it is better
if you’ve decided what you want to find out before you dive in. Using the tool itself,
one can get frustrated by the fact the user guide text disappears as you click on each
step it advises you to take, forcing you to go back and forth. It does take some time
to get used to how to load and overlay the various maps – but once you have got the
hang of it – it is possible to analyse the precise factors which make a particular area.
I started with an area I knew in my home town in Watford, and was surprised to see
that the flood risk in this area was only “average”, but the flood risk disadvantage
strong because of the socio-economic characteristics (low insurability, relatively
higher unemployment) of the area.
Perhaps the maps biggest use is in providing an evidence base to justify targeted
climate risk reducing interventions in areas that need it most. For example, with
evidence that the map provides, a LA’s tree planting or green infrastructure budget
could then be directed in that financial year to a low-income area projected to suffer
from increased heat in the future. The national findings from the tool are already
being used by the JRF to inform new research and advocacy. On 22nd July it
published new research highlighting the mismatch between flood defence
investments, and areas of high flood disadvantage according to the map. Only 100 of
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the 1,493 flood schemes in the pipeline could be found in the most flood
disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Some of the most useful content on the overall online portal is in the adaptation
planning guidance- particularly useful for a staff member looking to play a leading coordinating role with their local authority. One of the most important things when
embarking on such a comprehensive planning journey is to strongly understand how
the process itself can be embedded and tagged onto existing processes and
channels of engagement of the local authority. Creating entirely new parallel
processes, if people cannot easily find the hooks and links to their everyday, can
work against you, keep you in your silo, and create fatigue among colleagues and
partners.
Related briefings and projects
Project: Local Government flood forum
(June 2015) Project Resilience
(October 2014) Managing floods: Supporting local partnerships
(July 2014) Flooding Inquiry Reports : Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Committee
(May 2014) Climate Change and Social Justice: A Review
(July 2013) The National Adaptation Programme: Making the country resilient to a
changing climate
For more information about this, or any other LGiU member briefing, please
contact Janet Sillett, Briefings Manager, on janet.sillett@lgiu.org.uk
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charity 1113495. This briefing is available free of charge to LGiU subscribing members. Members are welcome to
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