Houston under Rising Seas

With climate change rapidly becoming a fixed reality within future predictions, urban centers are facing increasing consequences from threats such as sea level rise and increased extreme weather. The city of Houston, situated on the Gulf of Mexico, is at particular risk. Facing issues such as rapid subsidence, urban sprawl, and population growth as spatio-temporal factors, Houston's precarious situation is compounded by soil composition, exponential population growth, non-centralised land planning, and socioeconomic disparity - in addition to being in an area expecting increasing extreme weather patterns. Given its sizable population of 2.5 million and status as one of the primary economic hubs of the US, understanding the vulnerability of the city and its denizens within the near future is critical for any mitigation strategies to be employed. As such, the primary goal of this study was to understand the extent, and the threats, socio-economic and physical, that anthropogenic sea level rise poses to Houston, TX. This was tackled through an amalgamation of predictive approaches and GIS to create a digital simulacrum of Houston and its surroundings in 2050. Included in this research are methods such as subsidence topography projection, altitude-based inundation mapping, artificial neural network land use modeling, social vulnerability index impact assessment, and economic damage evaluation. These were carried out across varying Representative Climate Pathway scenarios, their respective sea level rise predictions, and possible storm surge extents. From this research, the vulnerability of the area was found to be quite high, with worst case scenarios incurring astronomical losses, up to 2,070,655,000m2 inundated, and 277k people classed as socially vulnerable affected. To counter this and limit future damages, key interventions such as a climate-forward development framework, equitable development regulations, and targeted infrastructure developments have been put forward.