While many coastal communities will experience long-term inundation and widespread intermittent flooding as a result of accelerating sea level rise, a recent paper published in Nature Communications revealed that minority populations will be disproportionately at risk of isolation when these levels rise above 4 feet.
As a result of disruptions to roads and transportation networks brought on by rising sea levels, people may become isolated and lose access to vital places like schools and emergency services.
The study also revealed that older adults and renters are more likely to experience social isolation, underscoring the growing correlation between the groups most at risk from climate change and the historical causes of current social inequality.
The first step in better characterizing these threats, according to study lead author Kelsea Best, an Assistant Professor of civil, environmental, and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University, is to alter the way researchers assess community risk.
Currently, most studies measure community risk by determining impacts solely through direct flooding. However, focusing only on this measurement ignores more intricate consequences of sea level rise, like isolation, and exacerbates inequality in coastal areas, according to Best.
By 2030, rising sea levels are predicted to affect about 20 million Americans who live along the coast; however, the study points out that this figure does not fully account for the effects that global warming will have on particular groups of people.
Notably, Best and her colleagues contend that a person’s inability to access vital locations such as public schools, supermarkets, fire stations, and hospitals has an adverse effect on them on par with living in a home that has been flooded and that this should be noted.
Most significantly, one of the primary causes of these enormous variations in risk is revealed by their findings: The risk of isolation for a group is closely linked to particular road networks and the locations of essential services in relation to the affected individuals’ residences.