Impact of Water Level Rise on Urban Infrastructures: Washington,DC, and Shanghai as Case Studies

The observed global sea level rise owing to climate change, coupled with the potential increase in extreme storms, requires a reexamination of existing infrastructural planning, construction, and management practices. Storm surge shows the effects of rising sea levels. The recent super storms that hit the United States (e.g., Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Sandy in 2012, Harvey and Maria in 2017) and China (e.g., Typhoon Haiyan in 2010) inflicted serious loss of life and property. Water level rise (WLR) of local coastal areas is a combination of sea level rise, storm surge, precipitation, and local land subsidence. Quantitative assessments of the impact of WLR include scenario identification, consequence assessment, vulnerability and flooding assessment, and risk management using inventory of assets from coastal areas, particularly population centers, to manage flooding risk and to enhance infrastructure resilience of coastal cities. This article discusses the impact of WLR on urban infrastructures with case studies of Washington, DC, and Shanghai. Based on the flooding risk analysis under possible scenarios, the property loss for Washington, DC, was evaluated, and the impact on the metro system of Shanghai was examined.     

Transmissions of real economic shocks across the Pacific Rim economies

We use Asian International Input–Output Tables 1995 in measuring trade dependencies of 10 Pacific Rim economies within a regional general equilibrium model. We develop two sets of metrics in measuring the trade dependencies of the economies. First, we use final demand elasticity of exports in measuring the sensitivities of the economies in the model to autonomous changes in the final demand in any other economy in the region. Second, we use a final-demand-weighted index of export elasticities that are induced by variations in the final demand vector of any economy in the model as indicators of the strength of the shocks transmitted across countries.The estimated coefficients have important policy implications. First, these coefficients identify the most vulnerable sectors of the economies in terms of the export/import dependency. Second, these coefficients may be readily used in bilateral and regional trade negotiations. Using these coefficients, policy makers can provide mutual trade concessions in dampening the effects of real and financial shocks transmitted from the trading partners.