Analyzing Environmental Vulnerabilities in Oakland

This StoryMap outlines local and regional environmental vulnerability faced by different areas in Oakland, California. I focus on a series of pressing climate issues that are projected to worsen in coming decades, including extreme urban heat, air pollution, and flood risk. As climate change scenarios compound in coming years, it is important for disaster preparedness plans and resilience assessments to be publicly accessible and equitably circulated.

I had two main goals for this project. My first goal was to use spatial environmental data in a geographic information system (GIS) workflow in order to map the distribution of three environmental risks. The results of these GIS analyses would be able to tell us which areas of Oakland are the most vulnerable and who specifically faces the brunt of these issues and their associated health risks. Additionally, being able to contextualize the scope of these environmental problems, especially as they relate to historical patterns of discrimination in urban planning, was a necessary component of this goal. The second goal of my project was to critically assess current policy proposed by the City of Oakland aimed at mitigating these environmental problems. I compared the city's action plans to the demands of local organizations representing the communities most at risk. Ultimately, I wanted this StoryMap to be a useful resource for Oakland residents who want to learn more about present and future efforts to address pressing environmental issues.

What follows is an in-depth exploration of extreme urban heat, air pollution and flood risk, as they are both spatially distributed across Oakland and framed in the context of urban-environmental policy. To go to a particular subtopic, click the label on the topic bar above.

Cities like Oakland experience what is known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect, whereby urban areas absorb significantly greater amounts of heat than surrounding suburban and rural regions (Gago et al., 2). Replacing vegetated landscapes with urban infrastructure (e.g. roads and buildings) is the main cause of this phenomena because dark-colored, urban structures absorb a lot of heat and fail to provide the cooling and shading properties of vegetation (Gago et al., 2). However, extreme heat is almost never equally distributed across urban cities themselves. And, the issue of extreme urban heat in Oakland, among many other urban areas, is reflective of historically racist and discriminatory housing policies and planning.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the federal government's Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) assigned grades to neighborhoods across the United States based on their  supposed level of mortgage security . Neighborhoods receiving "A" grades (visualized as the green polygons in the map on the left) denoted the lowest level of "risk". Meanwhile, neighborhoods receiving "D" grades (visualized as the red polygons in the map on the left) denoted the highest level of "risk", and were thought to be hazardous. Neighborhoods with more "risk", in this case, correlated with the prevalence of African American, immigrant and working-class communities, and the HOLC intentionally prevented communities living in "D" grades from being able to purchase homes and have a say in the development of their neighborhoods. This practice of redlining continued for decades, and it's very worst effects still have a significant impact on low-income communities of color. This pattern holds for Oakland as well. As you can see in the side-by-side maps below, neighborhoods that received grades of "C" or "D" are also those that are the most vulnerable to extreme heat—even in 2020. Racial segregation and the systemic disinvestment of Black, immigrant and working-class neighborhoods in Oakland has resulted in these communities having lower concentrations of trees and parks, and closer proximities to freeways,  all of which contribute to increased heat.  It is incredibly important to recognize how this legacy of racist and classist housing policy continues to hurt marginalized communities if changes are to be made to mitigate the slew of health effects related to extreme urban heat.  According to the Environmental Protection Agency , these health effects include, but are not limited to: respiratory illness, heat exhaustion, heat cramps, and heat stroke.

The results of my analysis indicate that a significant portion of Oakland is vulnerable or highly vulnerable to heat stress. The map to the left specifically highlights the heat vulnerabilities facing the Melrose and Fruitvale neighborhoods of the city. These areas have some of the highest population densities across all of Oakland and are situated nearby freeways and industrial and commercial zones. Additionally, this map visualizes that extreme heat stress starts to diminish when heading towards the northern and eastern portions of the city, which are comprised of neighborhoods that are predominantly white, less industrious and have higher percentages of tree canopy cover.

The second map focuses on the Elmhurst and Central East Oakland neighborhoods of the city. My suitability analysis demonstrates that these communities are also highly vulnerable to prolonged heat stress. Similar to the map of Melrose and Fruitvale, these parts of the city have high population densities, more people of color and border zones that are industrial. The lack of urban vegetation and green space in these areas is a significant cause for this degree of heat stress. While these maps are based on data from 2020, extreme urban heat is bound to increase and spread as the impacts of climate change become more omnipresent.

Air pollution and exposure to poor air quality is another environmental problem that is distributed unequally across the City of Oakland. As a result, the health issues associated with prolonged exposure to air pollution disproportionately affect some communities more than others. According to a 2021  study by the Environmental Defense Fund , communities in West and Downtown Oakland (made up of more than 70% people of color) have higher concentrations of childhood asthma, related to repeated exposure traffic and industrial air pollution. The study also found that the Oakland hills (where more than 70% of the population is white), on the other hand, saw substantially lower cases of childhood asthma because of their position located further away from high-traffic corridors and industry.  According to an article by Manisalidis et al.,  other health effects of prolonged exposure to air pollution include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, reproductive and central nervous system dysfunctions, and cancer. This case of environmental injustice is also inextricably linked to the legacy of redlining in Oakland, as marginalized communities were forced to live near newly-constructed highways and areas zoned specifically for industrial activities. My suitability map of Oakland's air pollution reflects the spatial extent of this legacy.

The map presented on the right focuses on the West Oakland and Northgate-Waverly neighborhoods of the city. According to my suitability analysis using CalEnviroScreen 4.0 data, these communities experience the greatest concentrations of various forms of air pollutants (e.g. PM 2.5, Diesel PM and Ozone). Three different highways, the Port of Oakland, and a number of other industrial facilities are found nearby, explaining why these communities experience such high levels of air pollution. As I saw with the prevalence of urban heat stress, air pollution in Oakland disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color.

Urban flooding is an important issue for Oakland residents to consider when thinking about potential climate disaster scenarios. Flood risk is especially important to evaluate when residential and commercial properties are thought to fall within flood hazard zones, so as to best mitigate any potential loss of life. The East Bay is prone to experience specific flood hazards caused by heavy rainfall and high levels of storm water runoff, tsunamis, and rising sea levels. The City of Oakland's proximity to the Hayward and San Andreas faults means that high levels of seismic activity can also result in flooding. The largest cause of flood risk in Oakland is from rapid storm-water runoff, which has increased in likelihood as the Oakland Hills have become more developed.

Much of the city lying along the coastline falls within the limits of the 100-year and 500-year floodplain,  as defined by FEMA . These areas have been designated as either "Zone A" or "Zone B", with "Zone A" representing highest risk (follow  this link  to learn more about Flood Zone designations). The inland areas of the city are mainly classified as low-risk, excluding regions around storm-drainage facilities. For the most part, flooding cannot be mitigated. In order to plan accordingly, it is important to know whether your home or place of work falls within a high-risk zone.

The map to the left highlights the current urban flood risks of East Oakland and Elmhurst. This map is based on my assessment of elevation, proximity to evacuation routes, FEMA's National Flood Hazard zone, the 5-meter flood band, and the projected river-flooding zone. As previously mentioned, the lack of flood-prevention infrastructure in these neighborhoods puts thousands of Oakland residents at risk, the majority of which are Latino and low-income. It should be noted that the Oakland International Airport is also highly vulnerable to flood risks, but this part of the city does not house residents of Oakland.

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The plots below show the relative distributions of social vulnerability of the total population in Alameda County and at-risk social infrastructure sites. A large proportion of Oakland residents are considered socially vulnerable and especially unprotected from climate disaster scenarios.

It is vital that resiliency assessments take special needs infrastructure into account. Climate disaster scenarios require premature planning by households and families. Some disaster preparedness tasks to think about include:

• Find the closest evacuation routes and climate shelters
• Plan a meeting spot ahead of time
• Review potential scenarios if someone in your household or family is at school, daycare, or an assisted living facility
• Prepare an emergency grab bag with essentials such as first aid kits, flashlights, batteries, potable water, and anything else you might need

It is necessary to coordinate a climate disaster plan with your household to ensure maximum preparedness.

The City of Oakland has conducted research and published resilience assessments based on current climate data and projected climate scenarios. The reports are extensive, so I suggest that you direct your search to the specific climate scenarios that interest you. Alternatively, you can look at your specific neighborhood's vulnerability by looking at the maps and data included in these plans.

The Heat Island Group operates through the Lawrence Hall of Science. Their research aims to engineer cooling technology and materials as an adaptive method in response to the urban heat island effect. Keep up to date with their research projects by looking at their website linked below.

Rachel Morello-Frosch, a UC Berkeley public health and ESPM professor, co-authored a research paper titled "Minorities more likely to live in 'urban heat islands,' study finds" that was published in the LA Times. It is a very interesting read, and I recommend checking it out through the link below.

Follow the portal below to look at current UC Berkeley research on air pollution. These professors are conducting important research projects that examine both the environmental and social impacts of air pollution.

If you are interested in creating your own geospatial content or are looking for open access data for the City of Oakland, I recommend checking out these links below. All data is easily downloadable and can be used for creating web apps, maps, or general visualization purposes.

• Urban Heat Stress: The Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan is centered around completing bicycle and pedestrian networks along with plans to provide safe, healthy public transportation for everyone. Oakland Climate Action Coalition’s (OCAC) community organizing aimed its efforts at robust active participation to improve public health and climate goals. In the lead-up to the Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan (ECAP), OCAC organized several community meetings to discuss the ECAP and the impacts it would have on ethnic and low-income communities—from adaptation and public health to GHG reduction and infrastructure (for example, transit-oriented development). There was active participation among Latina women through Mujeres Unidas y Activas (with a strong emphasis on interrelated concerns about food and families), as well as among residents from the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.

• Air Pollution: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) has developed a Climate Protection program (See table below). This program was developed in 2005 to provide regional leadership on climate change issues and to maximize co-benefits between climate change, criteria pollutant, and air toxics emissions reductions. At this time, this program is the most developed district-level climate change program in the state. The Bay Area 2010 Clean Air Plan (CAP) provides a comprehensive plan to improve Bay Area air quality and protect public health. The 2010 CAP has been prepared in close collaboration with the Air District’s regional agency partners, and has been informed by extensive outreach to the public and interested stakeholders. The CAP defines a control strategy that the Air District and its partners will implement to: (1) reduce emissions and decrease ambient concentrations of harmful pollutants; (2) safeguard public health by reducing exposure to air pollutants that pose the greatest health risk, with an emphasis on protecting the communities most heavily impacted by air pollution; and (3) reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to protect the climate. In addition to updating the Bay Area’s state ozone plan, the 2010 CAP will also serve as a multi-pollutant plan to protect public health and the climate. This effort to develop its first-ever multi-pollutant air quality plan is a voluntary initiative by the Air District. The Air District believes that an integrated and comprehensive approach to planning is critical to respond to air quality and climate protection challenges in the years ahead. In its dual roles as an update to our state ozone plan and a multi-pollutant plan, the 2010 CAP addresses four categories of pollutants: ground-level ozone and its key precursors; ROG and NOx; particulate matter: primary PM2.5, as well as precursors to secondary PM2.5; air toxics; and greenhouse gases.

• Sea Level Rise: The “Sea the Future” tool was developed by the California State Coastal Conservancy to help the state’s local planners and residents understand and be able to select from among a dozen different sea-level rise and flooding visualization tools that may be useful in efforts to plan for sea-level rise. Sea the Future provides summaries and information on tool features, similarities and differences across tools, and advantages and disadvantages of each tool so that end-users can make an informed decision about which tool(s) to use to support decision making. The Sea the Future (STF) tool was developed to help users understand the differences among 12 sea-level rise and coastal inundation information and mapping tools applicable to California. STF has a web page for each tool that gives a brief description of the tool, key features, geographic scope, release date, fact sheet, examples of the visualizations provided by the tool, and finally, a link to the tool itself. Local planners can use this tool to help evaluate differences between sea-level rise and flooding visualization tools in order to select the tool(s) most appropriate for their planning needs.

In order to fill the gap of identifying extreme heat risk, a recommendation is to create methods for vulnerability assessment to identify areas of extreme heat risk. Within this assessment, vulnerable communities can be identified and prioritized meeting the equity principles of equity mindedness, analyzing effectiveness, and equitable practices and policies.

Using triggers to enact call alerts, environmental justice communities can be identified and prioritized meeting the equity principles of equity mindedness, analyzing effectiveness, and equitable practices and policies given their location (i.e. located in urban areas affected by the intensification of the urban heat island effect) or vulnerability (i.e. larger population of older residents).

Multiple studies suggest that it is valuable to utilize public green spaces as a tool for future urban planning due to the potential for thermal intensity reductions and indirect benefits for human health. Higher levels of vegetation biomass have been associated with lowering thermal intensity more, due the increased amount of evapotranspiration (Nichol & Lee 2005). Parks that are less for recreational use, such as tennis courts and soccer fields, are going to have higher levels of trees in comparison to grasses, which would mean that the NDVI values are most likely skewed for those parks. Urban heat stress is not always the same during every season; for example due to peak energy demand over the summer, surface temperatures and thermal intensity are the strongest. Vegetation would help mitigate the Urban Heat Island effect in Oakland during the most critical months. Vegetation shows benefits of air cooling and the deacceleration of photochemical reactions thanks to its evapotranspirative processes. In Oakland densest city space, increasing the amount of green spaces, favoring woody vegetation, would help to reduce surface temperatures. One study suggests that to reduce the surface temperature by, on average, another 1.18 degrees for every 0.1 increase in NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). In addition to the UHI mitigation effects, there are socio-economic benefits to increasing the amount of trees in urban areas such as increased economic investment in lower income neighborhoods.

Policies for increasing education and awareness of extreme heat risks should include disseminating heat information through health care providers, create strategies to reach vulnerable communities during extreme heat 58 events, provide interactive tools that cater to different age groups and education levels, use media to distribute information, advertise cooling centers, educate employers and employees who works outdoors or heat risk workplaces, and create graphics that can be understood through many languages.

In order to fill the gap in local government Climate Action Plans of urban resilience strategies, the guidance document Preparing California for Extreme Heat: Guidance and Recommendations recommends that agencies review and incorporate changes to state and local regulations, codes and industry practices for buildings as well as land use and design elements. Title 24 California Building Standards Code is a set of requirements for “energy conservation, green design, construction and maintenance, fire and life safety, and accessibility” applied to a building’s “structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.” Updates to Title 24 to include measures that will mitigate future health risks of extreme heat and measures that will cool the interior of the building as well as contribute to the reduction of the urban heat island effect. In addition, urban planning strategies should be included in indoor air quality standards and codes, and incorporated into land use planning in building dense areas.

For concerns around air pollution, new/amended policies should focus on shifting district infrastructure budgeting away from rebuilding roads for car usage, toward reimagining roads to prioritize bike corridors and bus routes. It will truly take a political and cultural shift not only away from car usage and toward improved public transportation, but toward an anti-pollution Green New Deal future without burning fossil fuels.

To learn more about how Oakland communities come together to fight climate change, read this case study on  COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH, PLANNING & IMPLEMENTATION  (I recommend scrolling to the conclusions and recommendations section on Page 47 if you are a light reader).

“Air Pollution's Unequal Impacts in the Bay Area.” Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, 31 Mar. 2021, https://www.edf.org/airqualitymaps/oakland/health-disparities.

Capps, Kriston, and Christopher Cannon. “Redlined, Now Flooding.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 15 Mar. 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-flood-risk-redlining/.

“Flood Zones.” FEMA.gov, FEMA, 8 July 2020, https://www.fema.gov/glossary/flood-zones.

Gago, E.j., et al. “The City and Urban Heat Islands: A Review of Strategies to Mitigate Adverse Effects.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 25, 2013, pp. 749–758., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2013.05.057.

Garzon, C., & Cooley, H. (2012, September 28). Community Based Climate Adaptation Planning: Case Study of Oakland, California. Retrieved from https://www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/resources/community-based-climate-adaptation-planning-case-study-of-oakland-california.html

“Heat Island Impacts.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/heat-island-impacts.

Manisalidis, Ioannis, et al. “Environmental and Health Impacts of Air Pollution: A Review.” Frontiers in Public Health, vol. 8, 20 Feb. 2020, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00014.

“Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.” Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/37.823/-122.278&maps=0&city=oakland-ca&text=intro.

Manisalidis, I, et al. (2020). Environmental and Health Impacts of Air Pollution: A Review. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 14-28. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2020.00014

Plumer, Brad, et al. “How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html.

“Sea Level Rise.” City of Oakland, 31 Aug. 2018, https://www.oaklandca.gov/resources/sea-level-rise.

Tetra Tech, 2021, City of Oakland 2021 – 2026 Hazard Mitigation Plan, https://cao-94612.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/2021-04-30_OaklandHMP_AgencySubmittalDraft_2021-05-13-224630_nmab.pdf.

The City of Oakland, Oakland Public Works, Environmental Services Division, 2030 Equitable Climate Action Plan (ECAP), Government of the City of Oakland, 2020.

The City of Oakland, Oakland Public Works, Environmental Services Division, Oakland Preliminary Sea Level Rise Road Map, Government of the City of Oakland, Fall 2017.

The City of Oakland, Oakland Public Works, Environmental Services Division, Chapter 6: Flooding Hazards, Government of the City of Oakland, 2012.

Yang, L., & Qian, F. (2016). Research on Urban Heat-island Effect. Procedia Engineering, 169, 11-18. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.10.002