Climate change and health and social care: Defining future hazard, vulnerability and risk for infrastructure systems supporting older people's health care in England
Climate change and health and social care: Defining future hazard, vulnerability and risk for infrastructure systems supporting older people's health care in England
复制标题
气候变化与健康和社会关怀：定义支持英格兰老年人医疗保健的基础设施系统的未来危害、脆弱性和风险
DOI：
10.1016/j.apgeog.2011.05.012
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发表时间：
2012
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Oven K
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Oven K
卫生和社会护理系统(包括人口的护理需求以及提供卫生和社会护理的基础设施)可能会受到气候变化的影响，特别是洪水和热浪等与天气有关的灾害日益频繁和严重。在可预见的未来，酷浪也将继续具有挑战性。保护人们的健康和福祉不受气候变化的影响对老年人特别重要，因为他们特别容易受到与气候有关的灾害的影响。此外，65岁及以上人口的比例预计将大幅增加。本文通过讨论我们的工作来解决这些问题，我们的工作是绘制英格兰各地未来危险、脆弱性和风险的变化图。我们解释了如何使用这种地图来确定该国哪些地区为老年群体服务的已建基础设施在未来20-30年内可能受到与气候有关的事件的最严重影响，以及哪些地区最迫切需要规划适应和复原力。基于对极端天气事件及其对老年人健康和他们所依赖的护理服务之间关系的研究的回顾，我们制定了与极端天气相关的危险的可操作性定义，这些危险可能对老年人的健康和福祉至关重要的健康和社会护理系统造成特别的压力。我们考虑如何将这些与英国气候影响方案(UKCP09)对本世纪30年代的最新气候预测、2004年英国政府的展望洪水和海岸防御项目(环境署，2004)对本世纪50年代的河流和海岸洪水预测以及英国国家统计局对2031年的人口预测联系起来。这项研究突出了进行未来危险和脆弱性评估的复杂性。主要挑战包括：如何界定未来与气候变化有关的危害；如何预测和解释造成脆弱性的未来社会人口条件；以及灾害和脆弱性的地理变异性如何结合在一起在地方一级产生风险。与一些更注重城市人口对气候变化(特别是热浪)影响的脆弱性的地方性研究不同，这些研究结果突出了更多农村地区(通常在沿海地区)的老年人口对英格兰北部和南部一系列与极端天气有关的灾害的潜在脆弱性。
Health and social care systems (including the care needs of the population and infrastructures providing health and social care) are likely to be influenced by climate change, in particular by the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related hazards such as floods and heatwaves. Coldwaves will also continue to be challenging in the foreseeable future. Protecting people’s health and wellbeing from the impacts of climate change is especially important for older people, as they are particularly vulnerable to climate-related hazards. In addition, the proportion of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase significantly. This paper addresses these issues through a discussion of our work to map variations across England in future hazards, vulnerability and risk. We explain how this mapping has been used to identify areas of the country where the built infrastructure serving the older age group might be most severely impacted by climate-related events over the next 20–30 years and where planning for adaptation and resilience is most urgently required. Based on a review of research on the links between extreme weather events and their impacts on older people’s health and the care services on which they depend, we developed operational definitions of extreme weather-related hazards likely to place particular pressure on health and social care systems that are essential for older people’s health and wellbeing. We consider ways to relate these to the latest climate projections for the 2030s from the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCP09); river and coastal flooding projections for the 2050s from the 2004 UK Government’s Foresight Flood and Coastal Defence Project (Environment Agency, 2004); and demographic projections for 2031 produced by the Office for National Statistics, UK. The research highlights the complexity of undertaking future hazard and vulnerability assessments. Key challenges include: how to define future hazards associated with climate change; how to predict and interpret future socio-demographic conditions contributing to vulnerability; and how geographical variability in hazards and vulnerabilities may combine to produce risks at the local level. In contrast to a number of more local studies which have focused on the vulnerability of urban populations to the impact of climate change (particularly heatwaves), the findings highlight the potential vulnerability of older populations in more rural regions (often in coastal areas) to a range of extreme weather-related hazards in both the North and South of England.