Safety Element
Key Terms
Adaptation: Making changes in response to current or future conditions (such as the increased frequency and intensity of climate-related hazards), usually to reduce harm and to take advantage of new opportunities.[1], [2]
Adaptive Capacity: The combination of the strengths, attributes, and resources available to an individual, community, society, or organization that can be used to prepare for and undertake actions to reduce adverse impacts, moderate harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities.[3]
Cascading or Compounding Effects: Extreme events that link together hazards over days, weeks, or months, resulting in multiplied effects that cause secondary and sometimes tertiary damage, exceeding the damage of the initial hazard event.
Climate Change: A change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the mean, and/or the variability, of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
Community Asset: A valued feature of a community that may be harmed by climate change. Community assets may include buildings, infrastructure, community services, ecosystems, and economic drivers.
Exposure: The presence of people; infrastructure; natural systems; and economic, cultural, and social resources in areas that are subject to harm.[4]
Goal: An ideal future end related to public health, safety, or general welfare.
Hazard: An event or physical condition that has the potential to cause fatalities, injuries, property damage, infrastructure damage, damage to the environment, interruption of business, or other types of harm or loss.[5]
Impact: The effects (especially the negative effects) of a hazard or other conditions associated with climate change.
Policy: A specific statement that guides decision-making, indicating a commitment of the local legislative body to a particular course of action.
Program: An action, procedure, program, or technique that carries out a general plan policy.
Resilience: The capacity of any entity—an individual, a community, an organization, or a natural system—to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses, and to adapt and change from a disruptive experience. Community resilience is the ability of communities to withstand, recover, and to learn from past disasters to strengthen future response and recovery efforts.
Risk: The potential for damage or loss created by the interaction of hazards with assets such as buildings, infrastructure, or natural and cultural resources.
Vulnerability: The degree to which natural, built, and human systems are susceptible to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the absence of capacity to adapt.[6]
Vulnerability Assessment: An analysis of how a changing climate may harm a community and which elements—people, buildings and structures, resources, and other assets—are most vulnerable to its effects based on an assessment of exposure, sensitivity, potential impact(s), and the community’s adaptive capacity.
[1] Louise Bedsworth, Dan Cayan, Guido Franco, Leah Fisher, Sonya Ziaja, “Statewide Summary Report,” in California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, publication number: SUMCCCA4-2018-013, 2018.
[2] California Natural Resource Agency, Safeguarding California Plan: 2018 Update: California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy, 2018, http://resources.ca.gov/docs/climate/safeguarding/update2018/safeguarding-california-plan-2018-update.pdf.
[3] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Annex II: Glossary,” ed. K. J. Mach, S. Planton, and C. von Stechow, in Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, ed. Core Writing Team, R. K. Pachauri, and L. A. Meyer (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2014), p. 117–130, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/.
[4] Louise Bedsworth, Dan Cayan, Guido Franco, Leah Fisher, Sonya Ziaja, “Statewide Summary Report,” in California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, publication number: SUMCCCA4-2018-013, 2018.
[5] California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, California State Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018, https://www.caloes.ca.gov/cal-oes-divisions/hazard-mitigation/hazard-mitigation-planning/state-hazard-mitigation-plan.
[6] Neil Adger, “Vulnerability,” Global Environmental Change 16 (2006): 268–281, https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~nabo/meetings/glthec/materials/simpson/GEC_sdarticle2.pdf.