• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.296-306
• /
• 2016

There is a growing interest in establishing a regional climate change adaptation policy as the climate change impact in the region and local scale increases. This study focused on the analysis of 32 regions on its characteristics of local climate change adaptation plans. First, statistic program R was used for conducting cluster analysis based on the frequency and budgets of adaptation plan. Further, we analyzed damage frequency from newspapers regarding climate change impacts in eight categories which were caused by extreme weather events on 2,565 cases for 24 years. Lastly, the characteristics of climate change adaptation plan was compared with damage frequency patterns for evaluating the adequacy of climate change adaptation plan on each cluster. Four different clusters were created by cluster analysis. Most clusters clearly have their own characteristics on certain sectors. There was a high frequency of damage in 'disaster' and 'health' sectors. Climate change adaptation plan and budget also invested a lot on those sectors. However, when comparing the relative rate among regional governments, there was a difference between types of damage and climate change adaptation plan. We assumed that the difference could come from that each region established their adaptation plans based on not only the frequency of damage, but vulnerability assessment, and expert opinions as well. The result of study could contribute to policy making of climate change adaptation plan.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.165-178
• /
• 2014

National and local governmental adaptation plan for climate change will become mandatory in 2015. In order to establish the plan, assessment of vulnerability to climate change needs to be preceded. LCCGIS, a toolkit for vulnerability assessment, has been widely used by many local governments. However, assessment results by LCCGIS are not yet reliable because most of the vulnerability indices applied to LCCGIS　have the same value for almost all administrative units in Korea. In this study, proxy variables for hard-collectable indices were introduced, and the results were compared with those without any proxy variables. Vulnerability assessment could be conducted subjectively due to uncertainty. Thus, determination of objective indices, understanding the available data, and changes of indices in local conditions were organized. Results from this study are expected to make vulnerability assessment reliable and contribute to assessing vulnerability to climate change reflecting on local governmental characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.1-11
• /
• 2016

Climate change is the issue that attracts the most attention in the field of environment, as well as the most challenging task faced by the human race. There are various ways to resolve this issue. South Korea has established the primary and secondary national climate change adaptation plans at the national level, and is making it compulsory for each local government (lower and municipal-level) to establish climate change adaptation plans. Climate change vulnerability assessment plays an essential role in establishing climate change adaptation action plans. However, vulnerability assessment has a difficulty performing individual assessments since the results are produced through complex calculations of multiple impact factors. Accordingly, this study developed a web-based supporting tool(VESTAP) for climate change vulnerability assesment that can be used by lower and municipal-level local governments. The VESTAP consists of impact DB and vulnerability assessment and display tool. The index DB includes total 455 impacts of future climate data simulated with RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) 4.5 and 8.5, atmospheric environment data, other humanities and social statistics, and metadata. The display tool has maximized convenience by providing various analytical functions such as spatial distribution, bias and schematization of each vulnerability assessment result. A pilot test of health vulnerability assessment by particulate matters in Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City was performed using the VESTAP, and Bukang-myeon showed the highest vulnerability. By using the developed tool, each local government is expected to be able to establish climate change adaptation action plans more easily and conveniently based on scientific evidence.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.79-92
• /
• 2020

This study aimed at analyzing the current status and further needs of ecological information which is provided with the civil servants in the process of climate change adaptation planning in ecosystem sector and at providing suggestions for future development of ecological knowledge on climate change. Therefore, we conducted a questionary survey titled as "the knowledge-base and information needs for climate change adaptation in ecosystem sector" with the civil servants who are engaged with adaptation practices in the ecology related divisions in 17 regional local governments (RLG) and the affiliated basic local governments (BLG) in Korea. As a result, the characteristics of ecological information which is applied in public practices was analyzed and strategies for improved utilization was suggested. 75% of the respondents (RLG 85% and BLG 72%) were aware of the relativeness between the existence and utilization of ecological information and the execution of climate adaptation practices in ecosystem sector. They were agreed with the necessity of ecological information not only in adaptation practices but also overall affairs in the ecological related division in the local government (RLG 82% and BLG 72%). The current situation of utilizing ecological information which is produced from central orlocal government to civil affairs were only represented as 64 persons (28%) in RLG and 42 persons (18%) in BLG. One of the major obstacles that the respondents confront with when applying ecological information to public practices was deficit of prior knowledge on the ecological information itself, such as awareness of the characteristics of ecological information and the link with public affairs for adaptation plans. Therefore, delivering current knowledge and ecological information on climate change by educational and promotional method is an urgent priority to the civil servant. The future needs on ecological information for local government servants were deduced as basic information on local ecosystem and applied knowledge on local development to meet the biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services at the same time. The respondents expected not only the specific guidelines for using ecological information to apply on the adaptation plans in the relevant divisions of the local governments but also the institution where the usage activation of ecological information would be operated and managed to enhance the information utilizing structure in the local government. In the nation-wide, the capacity of local governments should be enhanced with adaptation knowledge and the application of appropriate information to the public practices by central government's aiding with the better quality of information, its public promotion, and the applicability to civil affairs.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.291-303
• /
• 2013

After establishing national greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, the South Korean government has been pursuing sector- and industry-specific greenhouse gas emission reduction measures; in support of which, metropolitan city / state governing entities, such as Gyeonggi Province, etc., have been in lock steps by establishing and executing climate change measures that are appropriate for the regional characteristics. However, in the case of local governments, difficulties abound due to the fact that the per-unit greenhouse gas emission amounts and the future emission estimates for establishing reduction targets are not clear. In order to establish correct climate change measure policies, the policy directions and the assessment of verified greenhouse gas emission amounts would need to serve as the basis, and along with the national level climate change effect and vulnerability assessment, there's a need to develop methodologies that take into consideration the local characteristics and conditions. To this end, this study calculated the greenhouse gas emission amounts of the City of Siheung, a basic local government in Gyeonggi Province, by using the GEBT (Greenhouse gas Emission Business-as-usual Tool) developed by the National Institute of Environmental Research to facilitate easy calculations of BAU (business-as-usual) emission quantities by local governing entities.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.13-24
• /
• 2012

CCGIS (Climate Change Adaptation Toolkit based on GIS) was developed to use as a tool for the climate change assessment and any relevant tasks involving climate change adaptation policy over Korean peninsula. The main objective of CCGIS is to facilitate an efficient and relevant information for the estimation of climate change vulnerability index by providing key information in the climate change adaptation process. In particular, the atmospheric modeling system implemented in CCGIS, which is composed of climate and meteorological numerical model and the atmospheric environmental models, were used as a tool to generate the climate and environmental IPCC SRES (A2, B1, A1B, A1T, A1FI, and A1 scenarios) climate data for the year of 2000, 2020, 2050, and 2100. This article introduces the components of CCGIS and describes its application to the Korean peninsula. Some examples of the CCGIS and its use for both climate change adaptation and estimation of vulnerability index applied to Korean provinces are presented and discussed here.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.25-37
• /
• 2012

This research proposes the direction for the assessment of local government infrastructure vulnerabilities relating to climate change driven flood and analyzes the assessment result. In this research, the local government infrastructures are evaluated by three indices such as exposure, infrastructure sensitivity, adaptive capacity and each index is calculated by selected alternative variable. Climate change scenario(A1B) developed on National Institute of Environmental Research is used to calculate present and future(2020, 2050, 2100s) exposure. As the result of infrastructure vulnerability assessment on present, the infrastructures in Seoul, Northern Gyeonggi-do, Gangwon-do, coastal area of Gyeongsangnam-do are vulnerable to flooding. For future, although the spatial pattern of flooding vulnerable infrastructure are similar, the flooding vulnerabilities of infrastructure in Gyeonggido and Ganwon-do would be increased as close to 2100s. It is expected that this research can be utilized as the preliminary analysis for climate change adaptation in local government infrastructure because this research propose the method for the assessment of local government infrastructure vulnerability relating to climate change driven flood and the result such as a trend of infrastructure vulnerability to flooding and the level of contribution of each index and alternative variable.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2013

This study has purpose to minimize the impact of climate change of Siheung. Vulnerability assessment was carried out for establishing the Siheung Climate Change Master Plan. Climate change vulnerability assessment analyzed using climate exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity indicators. A proxy variable is selected from each indicator. Meteorological data uses the RCP scenarios provided by the Meteorological Administration, and this study assumes that the same trend will continues in the future. Siheung are vulnerable to heavy rains in the flooded roads and farmland. Also, it is necessary to be careful heat wave in summer. The size and scale of the damage depends on the city's ability to respond to the impacts of climate change. It is necessary to make a adaptation plan for climate change impact assessment and vulnerability analysis. This study will be used to make Siheung Climate Change Master Plan and to determine the priority of the policy as guideline. It is expected that this study is helpful to pursue climate change vulnerability assessment of other local governments.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.143-154
• /
• 2024

Heat waves caused by climate change are rapidly increasing health damage to vulnerable groups, and to prevent this, the national, regional, and local governments are establishing climate crisis adaptation policy. A representative climate crisis adaptation policy to reduce heat wave damage is to expand the number of cooling centers. Because it is highly effective in a short period of time, most metropolitan local governments, except Jeonbuk, include the project as an adaptation policy. However, the criteria for selecting a cooling centers are different depending on the budget and non-budget, so the utilization rate and effectiveness of the cooling centers are all different. Therefore, in this study, we developed logistic regression models that can predict and evaluate areas with a high probability of expanding cooling centers in order to implement adaptation policy in local governments. In Incheon Metropolitan City, which consists of various heat wave-vulnerable environments due to the coexistence of the old city and the new city, a logistic model was developed to predict areas where heat waves can be cooling centered by dividing it into Ganghwa·Ongjin-gun and other regions, taking into account socioeconomic and environmental differences. As a result of the study, the statistical model for the Ganghwa·Ogjin-gun region showed that the higher the ground surface temperature and the more and more the number of elderly people over 65 years old, the higher the possibility of location of cooling centers, and the prediction accuracy was about 80.93%. The developed logistic regression model can predict and evaluate areas with a high potential as cooling centers by considering regional environmental and social characteristics, and is expected to be used for priority selection and management when designating additional cooling centers in the future.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.26-36
• /
• 2020

This study aimed at investigating present research and knowledge-base on climate change adaptation in ecosystem sector and analyzed the current status of basic information on ecosystem that functions as evidence-base of climate change adaptation to deduce the suggestions for the future development for knowledge and information in biodiversity. In this perspective, a questionary survey titled as "the ecological knowledge-base and information needs for climate change adaptation" with the researchers who were engaged with adaptation studies for biodiversity in the ecosystem related-research institutes including national and 17 regional local governments-affiliated agencies in Korea. The results are as follows; current status of utilizing ecological information which supports climate change adaptation strategy, future needs for adaptation knowledge and ecological information, and activation of utilizing ecological information. The majority of respondents (90.7%) replied that the ecological information has high relevance when conducting research on climate change adaptation. However, only half of all respondents (53.2%) agreed with the real viability of current information to the adaptation research. Particularly, urgent priority for researchers was deduced as intensifying knowledge-base and constructing related information on 'ecosystem change from climate change (productivity, community structure, food chain, phenology, range distribution, and number of individuals) with the overall improvement of information contents and its quality. The respondents emphasized with the necessity of conducting field surveys of local ecosystem and constructing ecosystem inventories, advancing monitoring designs for climate change in ecosystem, and case studies for regional ecosystem changes with the guidance or guidelines for monitoring ecosystem change to enhance the quality of adaptation research and produce related information. In terms of activation for ecological information usage, national and local adaptation network should be working based on the integrated ecological platform necessary to support exchanges of knowledge and information and to expand ecosystem types in time and spatial dimension.