An Analysis on the Spatial Patterns of Heat Wave Vulnerable Areas and Adaptive Capacity Vulnerable Areas in Seoul

With more than 10 million inhabitants, in particular, Seoul, the capital of Korea, has already experienced a number of severe heat wave. To alleviate the potential impacts of heat wave and the vulnerability to heat wave, policy-makers have generally considered the option of heat wave strategies containing adaptation elements. From the perspective of sustainable planning for adaptation to heat wave, the objective of this study is to identify the elements of vulnerability and assess heat wave-vulnerability at the dong level. This study also performs an exploratory investigation of the spatial pattern of vulnerable areas in Seoul to heat wave by applying exploratory spatial data analysis. Then this study attempts to select areas with the relatively highest and lowest level of adaptive capacity to heat wave based on an framework of climate change vulnerability assessment. In our analysis, the adaptive capacity is the relatively highest for Seongsan-2-dong in Mapo and the relatively lowest for Changsin-3-dong in Jongno. This study sheds additional light on the spatial patterns of heat wave-vulnerability and the relationship between adaptive capacity and heat wave.