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the population. . These five core services are supplied by a collection of service provid-
ers in both the public and private sectors. Governance plays a key role in insuring the
smooth and adequate provision of these services so that the health, economy and quality
of life in the metropolitan area remain sound.
As noted in the 2009 state of knowledge report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the
United States ( GCRP, 2009 ) , urban areas face unique vulnerabilities to climate change,
and the impact/vulnerability literature since 2007 has had a considerable focus on met-
ropolitan areas. That urban areas have unique conditions and vulnerabilities has been
the subject of a number of influential studies. For instance, Kirshen, et al. 2008 conduct-
ed a case study of the Boston area and found numerous interdependencies among infra-
structure types vulnerable to climate effects.
Climate effects, such as sea level rise and storm surge, affect all infrastructures in the
geographic vicinity with compounding impacts. Coastal flooding, for example, affects
not only transportation services, , energy and communications, in the same geographic
area. A major theme of a Boston case study is that “adaptation of infrastructure to cli-
mate change must also consider integration with land use management, environmental
and socio-economic impacts, and various institutions.” Amato et al., 2005, also found
that energy demand could double by 2030 from air conditioner use and population
growth; this increased demand would require new energy generation that is capital in-
tensive and needs a long lead time. In 2011, the state of Massachusets found that a sea
level rise of 0.65 meters by 2050 could damage assets worth $463 Billion (Massachusets
Climate Change Adaptation Report, 2011).
New York City has had a major impact and adaptation effort underway for a number
of years. In 2007, Jacob wrote that New York's role as a mega-city was linked to its highly
developed infrastructure, particularly to transportation (Jacob, et al., 2007). The NYC
metropolitan area has one of the largest transit systems in the world and there are more
than 2000 bridges and tunnels in the City alone. With much of that infrastructure at ele-
vations of only two to six meters above sea level, it is vulnerable to the effects of sea-level
rise and storm surge. Jacob found that the damages from the most severe storms could
exceed $100-200 Billion. In June 2010, Rosenzweig and Solecki, et al., as part of the New
York City Panel on Climate Change that advises the City in climate concerns, proposed
how a risk management response might be constructed (Rosenzweig, 2011b).
Major efforts have also been undertaken in other cities focused on one or more cli-
mate impacts. Based on evidence from the 1995 heat wave that took 800 lives in the
city of Chicago, for example, Hayhoe developed a framework for quantifying climate
impacts on urban energy and infrastructure (Hayhoe, K., et al., 2010). She found that
mean annual temperature and the frequency of heat waves were key drivers and that
Chicago's labor, maintenance and capital investments would be 3.5 times higher under
a high emissions scenario than under a low one.
Riverine flooding is an issue in Portland, and Chang modeled the impact on travel
delay using a suite of climate, hydrologic, hydraulic and transportation models in an
integrated analysis (Chang, et al., 2010). Other urban areas which have efforts under-
way that address infrastructure components include San Francisco, Seatle and Miami.
Finally a study of Copenhagen is relevant because of its economic scope. In 2010, Hal-
legate et al. produced a methodology to model the direct and indirect economic impacts
of storm surge and sea level rise from climate change (Hallegate, et al., 2011). Employing
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