Facing climate change and improving emergency responses in South America by analyzing urban cyclonic wind events

Abstract

Climate change is modifying the spatiotemporal patterns of global precipitation events, temperatures, and winds, therefore, after extreme events, improving emergency responses in urban areas is key to saving its inhabitants. In Southern America, the number of extreme events is increasing. This is the case of Soledad, the municipality in Colombia where most of the catastrophic wind phenomena take place. To date, no studies have been conducted to quantify the impacts and effects of the urban cyclonic wind phenomena on society and the urban built environment. This lack of information and dissemination means that the population is not informed of the magnitude of the problem. This research aims to generate a risk map of atmospheric wind phenomena to evaluate their impacts and establish spatial-temporal correlations based on meteorological data from the last 20 years. Moreover, the online press has been used to identify the location of these phenomena and their negative impacts over time. For each event, the following indicators have been studied: (1) location of the atmospheric wind events; (2) occurrence rate; (3) impact of the events discriminated by fatalities, injuries, and affected houses. The results show that in 20 years, a total of 34 urban cyclonic wind events were reported. Those occurrences have impacted 60 neighbourhoods, leaving 7 deaths, 14,552 injured, and 5180 affected homes. These findings show the magnitude of the problem and the need to inform the population to improve emergency responses. We conclude that effective consideration of the resulting map will be crucial in the processes of decision-making related to territorial planning in Soledad, but also in other Southern American cities.