Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives for developing vulnerability scenarios and so-called shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) have been undertaken. Most of these scenarios, however, do not provide sufficient information for local scenarios and local climate risk management. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios for vulnerability at the local scale in order to complement climate change scenarios. Heat stress is seen as a key challenge in cities in the context of climate change and further urban growth. Based on the research project ZURES (ZURES 2020 website), the paper presents a new method for human vulnerability scenarios to heat stress at the very local scale for growing medium-sized cities. In contrast to global models that outline future scenarios mostly with a country-level resolution, we show a new method on how to develop spatially specific scenario information for different districts within cities, starting from the planned urban development and expansion. The method provides a new opportunity to explore how different urban development strategies and housing policies influence future human exposure and vulnerability. Opportunities and constraints of the approach are revealed. Finally, we discuss how these scenarios can inform future urban development and risk management strategies and how these could complement more global or national approaches.

Conventional local public health planning and monitoring are insufficiently addressing the conjugated impact of urban development change and climate change in the future. The existing checklist and index often ignore the spatial-network interaction determining urban public health services in forward-looking aspects. This study offers and demonstrates a climate-resilient operationalization framework for urban public health services considering the interaction between urban development change and climate change across scales. A combination of collaborative scenario planning and tailor-made composite indicators were applied based on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)’s climate risk concept to adhere to local realities and diverse sets of scenarios. The framework was contested in a medium-sized city with a universal health care coverage setting, Khon Kaen city, Thailand. The results show that the coupling of collaborative scenario planning and composite indicators allows local public health care to operationalize their potential impact and climate-resilient targets in the future(s) in multiple service operation aspects. The scenarios assessment outcomes prove that although public health devotion can be fail-safe, achieving climate-resilient targets requires sectoral integration with urban development and health determining domains. Further exploration and disputation of the framework with a wider scale and diversified settings are recommended to enhance their robustness and universality.

The juxtaposition of climate change and development changes is vital for understanding the future impacts of heat stress in urban areas. However, an approach that considers the relationship between climatic factors and socio-economic vulnerability in a forward-looking and stakeholder-involved manner is challenging. This article demonstrates the application of a future-oriented vulnerability scenarios approach to address human heat stress in Bonn, Germany, in 2035. The study highlights the interplays between climate trajectories and heat exposure associated with urban development scenario corridors. Moreover, this method allows for changing combinations of intersections and conditionalities of projected individual socio-economic vulnerability indicators in response to social and climate governance. However, this study found that a conventional structure within city departments might limit this integrative approach in practice. Thus, the theoretical background and the concept of alternative futures and uncertainties should be the focus of communication with practitioners to maximize the utilization of the results.

Purpose: The interaction between urban development and climate change significantly impacts local public health services. Unfortunately, cities and involved institutions often fail to prioritize and integrate spatial planning when dealing with these unprecedented future challenges. This study aims to offer Health Integrative Climate Resilience and Adaptation Future (HICRAF), an innovative planning framework that systematically operationalizes future climate risks and their impact on local public health services. Design/methodology/approach: HICRAF is developed based on the intermix of explorative and normative scenario planning approaches. Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative techniques were applied to develop and operationalize the local climate adaptation scenarios through stakeholder participation. The framework demonstrates how different methods and scales (spatial and temporal) can be linked to exhibit climate risk outcomes of different future pathways. Findings: The practicality of HICRAF was demonstrated in Khon Kaen city, where it bridged the gaps between global climate trajectories and local climate adaptation scenarios. It also highlights the need to consider intertwining spatial and systemic risks in local infrastructure operations. Although HICRAF has gained political buy-in and fostered the establishment of stakeholder discourse on climate-resilient futures, further research is needed to enhance its robustness and replicability. Originality/value: This paper proposes a novel planning framework, HICRAF, that can systematically operationalize the future challenges of unprecedented climate change and urban development changes for the local public health service. The demonstration of HICRAF in Khon Kaen city provides empirical evidence of its implementability and upscaling potential.