SWERVE - Severe Weather Events Risk and Vulnerability Estimator

现在有一个广泛的科学共识，即全球气候正在发生变化，在未来几十年里，这种变化可能会对我们的社会和自然环境产生重大影响。全球变暖及其对极端天气事件的影响，可能对我们未来的生活方式产生深远的影响。最近的极端天气事件，如2005年美国飓风季节异乎寻常的飓风数量，2002年夏季中欧前所未有的洪水，第二年夏天欧洲热浪造成的悲惨生命损失，或2000年秋季英国严重的洪水，都被媒体认为是全球变暖的可能影响。这使我们把注意力集中在未来气候变化对我们社会的可能影响上，但最近的研究主要集中在预测未来全球或区域范围内极端天气事件的频率和强度的变化。然而，为了使我们的社会更好地适应气候变化和极端天气事件的未来影响，我们需要知道这些事件将如何影响当地社区，他们可能如何应对，以及需要采取哪些紧急和长期规划措施来增强其复原力。SWERVE（极端天气事件风险和脆弱性评估器）工具将通过与英国其他专家合作，在一个名为CREW的跨学科研究项目中检查这些和其他基础研究问题：社区对极端天气的恢复能力。SWERVE将利用来自全球气候模型的信息和一种被称为“降尺度”的技术，在地方、社区层面上产生有关极端天气的相关信息。这将使我们能够估计不同类型的极端天气，如洪水、风暴、干旱、热浪等，在现在和未来可能发生的频率。它还将使我们能够确定风险的“热点”，那里的社区可能容易受到一种以上极端天气事件的影响，例如，他们可能在冬季遭受洪水，在夏季遭受干旱。使用额外的建模工具，我们将能够从这些类型的极端天气事件到邮政编码水平确定处于危险中的地点。然后，这些信息将与我们的社会信息一起使用，以确定特别脆弱的社区和地点。总体产出将是决策者在面对应对极端天气事件的规划和管理决策时可以使用的工具包。这将提高社区处理善后和规划减少极端天气影响的能力。CREW项目将是一项试点研究，用于在英国各地生产一个工具包。试点研究将集中在伦敦东南部恢复区，并让该地区和英国其他地区的利益相关者参与工具包的开发。这将确保这是你和当地应急服务、城镇规划者和当地政府所需要的。我们还将通过将该工具应用于一些“假设”来查看它是否有用？与当地决策者一起进行案例分析，并在当地公司进行测试。管理人员可以使用这个新的工具包来设计能够抵御气候变化影响的系统；根据政府间气候变化专门委员会今年2月的最新报告，这种气候变化很可能是由人类活动引起的，并可能导致极端天气事件的增加。

There is now a broad scientific consensus that the global climate is changing in ways that are likely to have a large impact on our society and the natural environment over the coming decades. Global warming, and its impact on extreme weather events, may have a profound influence on the way we live in the future. Recent extreme weather events, such as the unusual number of hurricanes in the US 2005 hurricane season, the unprecedented flooding in central Europe insummer 2002, the tragic loss of life in the European heatwave the following summer, or the severity of flooding in the UK during autumn 2000, have been said to be a possible impact of global warming by the media. This has made us focus our attention on the possible impacts of future climate change on our society but most recent research has focussed on predictions of change in the future frequency and intensity of extreme weather events at a global or regional scale. However, to well-adapt our society to the future impacts of climate change and extreme weather events, we need to know how these events will affect local communities, how they may respond and what emergency and long term planning measures need to be undertaken to increase their resilience. The SWERVE (Severe Weather Events Risk and Vulnerability Estimator) tool will examine these and other fundamental research questions through collaboration with other experts in the UK in an inter-disciplinary research programme called CREW: Community Resilience to Extreme Weather. SWERVE will use information from global climate models and a technique called downscaling to produce relevant information on extreme weather at the local, community level. This will allow us to estimate how often different types of extreme weather, such as floods, storms, drought, heatwaves, etc., may happen both now and in the future. It will also allow us to identify 'hotspots' of risk, where communities may be vulnerable to more than one type of extreme weather event, e.g. they may suffer from floods in the winter and drought in the summer. Using additional modelling tools we will be able to identify locations at risk from these types of extreme weather events down to the postcode level. This information will then be used together with information on our society to identify communities and locations that are particularly vulnerable. The overall output will be a toolkit that decision-makers can use when faced with planning and management decisions for coping with extreme weather events. This will increase the ability of the community to deal with the aftermath and to plan to reduce the impacts of extreme weather.The CREW programme will be a pilot study for a toolkit that could be produced across the UK. The pilot study will focus on the SE London Resilience Zone and engage stakeholders from this region and others across the UK in the development of the toolkit. This will ensure that it is what you and local emergency services, town planners and local government need. We will also look at whether the tool will be useful by applying it to some 'what-if?' cases together with local decision-makers and by testing it in local firms. This new toolkit can be used by managers to design systems that are robust to the impacts of climate change; climate change that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report in February this year, is very likely to be caused by human activities and is likely to cause an increase in extreme weather events.