Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes

This global screening study makes a first estimate of the exposure of the world's large port cities to coastalflooding due to storm surge and damage due to high winds. This assessment also investigates how climatechange is likely to impact each port city's exposure to coastal flooding by the 2070s, alongside subsidenceand population growth and urbanisation. The study provides a much more comprehensive analysis thanearlier assessments, focusing on the 136 port cities around the world that have more than one millioninhabitants in 2005. The analysis demonstrates that a large number of people are already exposed to coastalflooding in large port cities. Across all cities, about 40 million people (0.6% of the global population orroughly 1 in 10 of the total port city population in the cities considered here) are exposed to a 1 in 100 yearcoastal flood event.For present-day conditions (2005), the top ten cities in terms of exposed population are estimated to beMumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata, Greater New York, Osaka-Kobe,Alexandria and New Orleans almost equally split between developed and developing countries. Whenassets are considered, the current distribution becomes more heavily weighted towards developedcountries, as the wealth of the cities becomes important. The top 10 cities in terms of assets exposed areMiami, Greater New York, New Orleans, Osaka-Kobe, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nagoya, Tampa-StPetersburg and Virginia Beach. These cities contain 60% of the total exposure, but are from only three(wealthy) countries: USA, Japan and the Netherlands. The total value of assets exposed in 2005 is acrossall cities considered here is estimated to be US$3,000 billion corresponding to around 5% of global GDPin 2005 (both measured in international USD)...

OECD Environment Working Papers

Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes

Exposure Estimates