Malecha Matthew L, Kirsch Katie R, Karaye Ibraheem, Horney Jennifer A, Newman Galen
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.
Epidemiology Program, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA.
Sustainability (New Rochelle). 2020 Dec 1;13(6):282-291. doi: 10.1089/sus.2020.0067. Epub 2020 Dec 9.
Harris County, Texas, is home to thousands of documented sources of environmental pollution. It is also highly vulnerable to impacts from natural hazards, including floods. Building on the Toxics Mobility Inventory (TMI), this article discusses how the authors developed a Toxics Mobility Vulnerability Index (TMVI) and applied it to Harris County to assess potential exposure risks to residents from the transfer of toxic materials during flood events. The TMI concept was operationalized and standardized by combining multiple spatial data sets to simultaneously evaluate various factors in the weather hazards-extant toxics-social vulnerability nexus (e.g., floodplain area, industrial land use, social vulnerability measures). Findings indicated hot spots of vulnerability to hazard-induced toxics transfer concentrated in Northeast Houston US Census tracts in Harris County. The main drivers of increased risk in these areas include the proportion of the area that is impervious surface, consistently high social vulnerabilities, and poor health. However, the most vulnerable areas also have overlapping exposure to both industrial land use and floodplains. Assessing the contribution of a set of industrial land use, social vulnerability, natural hazard, emergency response, and topography variables in a single index on the same spatial scale (e.g., US Census tract) provides detailed information for policy makers tasked with mitigating risk. Applying tools such as the TMVI to highly vulnerable urban and coastal locations may help identify changes needed for preparedness and mitigation planning and highlight areas where limited resources for investment- and policy-related remediation should be focused, both before and after disasters.
得克萨斯州哈里斯县存在数千个有记录的环境污染源。该县也极易受到自然灾害（包括洪水）的影响。基于有毒物质流动清单（TMI），本文讨论了作者如何开发有毒物质流动脆弱性指数（TMVI）并将其应用于哈里斯县，以评估洪水事件期间有毒物质转移对居民造成的潜在暴露风险。通过合并多个空间数据集，TMI概念得以实施和标准化，以便同时评估天气灾害-现有有毒物质-社会脆弱性关系中的各种因素（例如，洪泛区面积、工业用地、社会脆弱性指标）。研究结果表明，哈里斯县美国人口普查区中，易受灾害引发的有毒物质转移影响的热点地区集中在休斯顿东北部。这些地区风险增加的主要驱动因素包括不透水表面的面积比例、持续较高的社会脆弱性以及较差的健康状况。然而，最脆弱的地区同时也重叠暴露于工业用地和洪泛区。在同一空间尺度（例如，美国人口普查区）的单一指数中评估一组工业用地、社会脆弱性、自然灾害、应急响应和地形变量的贡献，可为负责降低风险的政策制定者提供详细信息。将TMVI等工具应用于高度脆弱的城市和沿海地区，可能有助于确定备灾和减灾规划所需的变化，并突出在灾害前后投资和政策相关补救资源有限时应重点关注的领域。
