Twelfth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Planning instruments facilitate the construction of the coastal environment, damaging natural resources (e.g. forest, wetlands) that can favor the environmental dimension of resilience, or that related to ecosystem services provided by nature after a disaster that facilitate adaptation (e.g.: water, food). The Chilean coast is no exception. It covers an approximate area of 6.5 million hectares, in which over 4 million people live, most of which are distributed in 65 cities exposed to tsunami. The ways in which these cities have sprawl on the Chilean Costal Range (CCR) have changed community resilience capacity to tsunami. The objective of this study is to analyze the different forms of urbanization on the CCR and how these affect community’s adaptive capacity in the event of a tsunami. Through GIS and multivariate analysis, five typologies of cities were identified that vary in terms of the type of occupation and availability of resources for adaptation. Those with the greatest diversity and richness of natural resources have an occupation of around 30% of the CCR. Besides, the entropy of the urban land use on the CCR also explains the availability of resources and consequently, the adaptive capacity of the communities. Furthermore, the precipitation gradient (temperature), which increases (decreases) latitudinally along the coast, affects adaptation as well. The environmental dimension of urban resilience to tsunami is conditioned by a certain type of sprawl of the urban environment on the CCR, and its location, characteristics which are further detailed in this study.

Presenters

Paula Villagra
Associate Professor, Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Los Ríos, Chile