Vulnerability of critical infrastructure under climate change scenarios: The case of Santos

Abstract

Vulnerability is a concept that may be applied to many things, and is a way to identify points that must be prioritized by risk analysis. To that principle this chapter will explore the application of the SEVICA index (Zanetti VB, de Sousa Júnior WC, De Freitas DM. Sustainability 8:811-823, 2016) to the city of Santos, and try to identify sensible infrastructure that are in vulnerable areas, to extreme events effects, to show that much of the basic infrastructure that would be necessary in the occurrence of a extreme climate event, would in fact be affected by it, amplifying the potential vulnerability of the city habitants. In the study of the city of Santos, that most of the infrastructure in Santos, an important port city in Brazil, is located in areas of high vulnerability, which poses a major threat to the population, and a big challenge to city planners, to adapt the city and try to mitigate the possible impacts of the climate changes.