A New Dataset Integrating Public Socioeconomic, Physical Risk, and Housing Data for Climate Justice Metrics: A Test-Case Study in Miami

This month, we will be looking at climate change and climate justice. As we continue to see increased reports of extreme weather worldwide, societies must create effective mitigations to save lives. The authors of this week’s report used free and open data to assess the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations. The goal was to expand upon traditional metrics to see a complete picture of a world during climate change.

Excerpt: With this in mind, we integrated multiple publicly available datasets that include socioeconomic, climate risk scores, evictions, and housing variables at the census tract level over the United States to be used to investigate environmental justice themes. Our goal is that the dataset proposed here will allow for testing, assessing, and generating new analysis and metrics that can address inequalities and climate injustice. To demonstrate the potential of the new dataset, we report examples of application to the Miami area, where the recent increased risk of floods and extreme events has exposed socially vulnerable populations to the consequences of climate change.

Citation: Tedesco, M., Hultquist, C., & de Sherbinin, A. (2022). A New Dataset Integrating Public Socioeconomic, Physical Risk, and Housing Data for Climate Justice Metrics: A Test-Case Study in Miami. Environmental Justice, 15(3), 149–159. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0059