TY  - JOUR
A1  - Warchold, Anne
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Variations in sustainable development goal interactions
BT  - population, regional, and income disaggregation
JF  - Sustainable development
N2  - To fulfill the 2030 Agenda, the complexity of sustainable development goal (SDG) interactions needs to be disentangled. However, this understanding is currently limited. We conduct a cross-sectional correlational analysis for 2016 to understand SDG interactions under the entire development spectrum. We apply several correlation methods to classify the interaction as synergy or trade-off and characterize them according to their monotony and linearity. Simultaneously, we analyze SDG interactions considering population, location, income, and regional groups. Our findings highlight that synergies always outweigh trade-offs and linear outweigh non-linear interactions. SDG 1, 5, and 6 are associated with linear synergies, SDG 3, and 7 with non-linear synergies. SDG interactions vary according to a country's income and region along with the gender, age, and location of its population. In summary, to achieve the 2030 Agenda the detected interactions and inequalities across countries need be tracked and leveraged to "leave no one behind."
KW  - development pathways
KW  - disaggregation
KW  - inequalities
KW  - non‐ linearity
KW  - SDG interactions
KW  - SDGs
KW  - synergies and trade‐ offs
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2145
SN  - 0968-0802
SN  - 1099-1719
VL  - 29
IS  - 2
SP  - 285
EP  - 299
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kriewald, Steffen
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Benton, Tim G.
A1  - Fischer, Günther
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Urban food systems: how regionalization can contribute to climate change mitigation
JF  - Environmental science & technology
N2  - Cities will play a key role in the grand challenge of nourishing a growing global population, because, due to their population density, they set the demand. To ensure that food systems are sustainable, as well as nourishing, one solution often suggested is to shorten their supply chains toward a regional rather than a global basis. While such regional systems may have a range of costs and benefits, we investigate the mitigation potential of regionalized urban food systems by examining the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food transport. Using data on food consumption for 7108 urban administrative units (UAUs), we simulate total transport emissions for both regionalized and globalized supply chains. In regionalized systems, the UAUs' demands are fulfilled by peripheral food production, whereas to simulate global supply chains, food demand is met from an international pool (where the origin can be any location globally). We estimate that regionalized systems could reduce current emissions from food transport. However, because longer supply chains benefit from maximizing comparative advantage, this emission reduction would require closing yield gaps, reducing food waste, shifting toward diversified farming, and consuming seasonal produce. Regionalization of food systems will be an essential component to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C in the future.
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c02739
SN  - 0013-936X
SN  - 1520-5851
VL  - 54
IS  - 17
SP  - 10551
EP  - 10560
PB  - American Chemical Society
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Gudipudi, Venkata Ramana
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Urban emission scaling - Research insights and a way forward
T2  - Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319825867
SN  - 2399-8083
SN  - 2399-8091
VL  - 46
IS  - 9
SP  - 1678
EP  - 1683
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fluschnik, Till
A1  - Kriewald, Steffen
A1  - Ros, Anselmo Garcia Cantu
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Rybski, Diego
T1  - The Size Distribution, Scaling Properties and Spatial Organization of Urban Clusters: A Global and Regional Percolation Perspective
JF  - ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
N2  - Human development has far-reaching impacts on the surface of the globe. The transformation of natural land cover occurs in different forms, and urban growth is one of the most eminent transformative processes. We analyze global land cover data and extract cities as defined by maximally connected urban clusters. The analysis of the city size distribution for all cities on the globe confirms Zipf’s law. Moreover, by investigating the percolation properties of the clustering of urban areas we assess the closeness to criticality for various countries. At the critical thresholds, the urban land cover of the countries undergoes a transition from separated clusters to a gigantic component on the country scale. We study the Zipf-exponents as a function of the closeness to percolation and find a systematic dependence, which could be the reason for deviating exponents reported in the literature. Moreover, we investigate the average size of the clusters as a function of the proximity to percolation and find country specific behavior. By relating the standard deviation and the average of cluster sizes—analogous to Taylor’s law—we suggest an alternative way to identify the percolation transition. We calculate spatial correlations of the urban land cover and find long-range correlations. Finally, by relating the areas of cities with population figures we address the global aspect of the allometry of cities, finding an exponent δ ≈ 0.85, i.e., large cities have lower densities.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5070110
SN  - 2220-9964
VL  - 5
SP  - 1543
EP  - 1559
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Fluschnik, Till
A1  - Kriewald, Steffen
A1  - Ros, Anselmo García Cantú
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Rybski, Diego
T1  - The size distribution, scaling properties and spatial organization of urban clusters
BT  - a global and regional percolation perspective
N2  - Human development has far-reaching impacts on the surface of the globe. The transformation of natural land cover occurs in different forms, and urban growth is one of the most eminent transformative processes. We analyze global land cover data and extract cities as defined by maximally connected urban clusters. The analysis of the city size distribution for all cities on the globe confirms Zipf’s law. Moreover, by investigating the percolation properties of the clustering of urban areas we assess the closeness to criticality for various countries. At the critical thresholds, the urban land cover of the countries undergoes a transition from separated clusters to a gigantic component on the country scale. We study the Zipf-exponents as a function of the closeness to percolation and find a systematic dependence, which could be the reason for deviating exponents reported in the literature. Moreover, we investigate the average size of the clusters as a function of the proximity to percolation and find country specific behavior. By relating the standard deviation and the average of cluster sizes—analogous to Taylor’s law—we suggest an alternative way to identify the percolation transition. We calculate spatial correlations of the urban land cover and find long-range correlations. Finally, by relating the areas of cities with population figures we address the global aspect of the allometry of cities, finding an exponent δ ≈ 0.85, i.e., large cities have lower densities.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 356 
KW  - Zipf’s law
KW  - city clusters
KW  - percolation
KW  - Taylor’s law
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-400486
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - The role of city size and urban form in the surface urban heat island
JF  - Scientific reports
N2  - Urban climate is determined by a variety of factors, whose knowledge can help to attenuate heat stress in the context of ongoing urbanization and climate change. We study the influence of city size and urban form on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon in Europe and find a complex interplay between UHI intensity and city size, fractality, and anisometry. Due to correlations among these urban factors, interactions in the multi-linear regression need to be taken into account. We find that among the largest 5,000 cities, the UHI intensity increases with the logarithm of the city size and with the fractal dimension, but decreases with the logarithm of the anisometry. Typically, the size has the strongest influence, followed by the compactness, and the smallest is the influence of the degree to which the cities stretch. Accordingly, from the point of view of UHI alleviation, small, disperse, and stretched cities are preferable. However, such recommendations need to be balanced against e.g. positive agglomeration effects of large cities. Therefore, trade-offs must be made regarding local and global aims.
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04242-2
SN  - 2045-2322
VL  - 7
PB  - Nature Publ. Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gudipudi, Venkata Ramana
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Liu, Zhu
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - The efficient, the intensive, and the productive
BT  - Insights from urban Kaya scaling
JF  - Applied Energy
N2  - Urban areas play an unprecedented role in potentially mitigating climate change and supporting sustainable development. In light of the rapid urbanisation in many parts on the globe, it is crucial to understand the relationship between settlement size and CO2 emission efficiency of cities. Recent literature on urban scaling properties of emissions as a function of population size has led to contradictory results and more importantly, lacked an in-depth investigation of the essential factors and causes explaining such scaling properties. Therefore, in analogy to the well-established Kaya Identity, we develop a relation combining the involved exponents. We demonstrate that application of this Urban Kaya Relation will enable a comprehensive understanding about the intrinsic factors determining emission efficiencies in large cities by applying it to a global dataset of 61 cities. Contrary to traditional urban scaling studies which use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, we show that the Reduced Major Axis (RMA) is necessary when complex relations among scaling exponents are to be investigated. RMA is given by the geometric mean of the two OLS slopes obtained by interchanging the dependent and independent variable. We discuss the potential of the Urban Kaya Relation in mainstreaming local actions for climate change mitigation.
KW  - Sustainable cities
KW  - Urban CO2 emissions
KW  - Urban scaling
KW  - Kaya Identity
KW  - Urban Kaya relation
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.11.054
SN  - 0306-2619
SN  - 1872-9118
VL  - 236
SP  - 155
EP  - 162
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Klein, Daniel R.
A1  - Olonscheck, Mady
A1  - Walther, Carsten
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Susceptibility of the European electricity sector to climate change
JF  - Energy
N2  - The electricity system is particularly susceptible to climate change due to the close interconnectedness between electricity production, consumption and climate. This study provides a country based relative analysis of 21 European countries' electricity system susceptibility to climate change. Taking into account 14 quantitative influencing factors, the susceptibility of each country is examined both for the current and projected system with the result being a relative ranked index. Luxembourg and Greece are the most susceptible relatively due in part to their inability to meet their own electricity consumption demand with inland production, and the fact that the majority of their production is from more susceptible sources, primarily combustible fuels. Greece experiences relatively warm mean temperatures, which are expected to increase in the future leading to greater summer electricity consumption, increasing susceptibility. Norway was found to be the least susceptible, relatively, due to its consistent production surplus, which is primarily from hydro (a less susceptible source) and a likely decrease of winter electricity consumption as temperatures rise due to climate change. The findings of this study enable countries to identify the main factors that increase their electricity system susceptibility and proceed with adaptation measures that are the most effective in decreasing susceptibility.
KW  - Thermal electricity production
KW  - Energy security
KW  - Heating and cooling electricity consumption
KW  - Vulnerability
KW  - Air conditioners
KW  - Electricity generation by source
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2013.06.048
SN  - 0360-5442
VL  - 59
IS  - 6
SP  - 183
EP  - 193
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Li, Yunfei
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Singularity cities
JF  - Environment and planning. B, Urban analytics and city science
N2  - We propose an upgraded gravitational model which provides population counts beyond the binary (urban/non-urban) city simulations. Numerically studying the model output, we find that the radial population density gradients follow power-laws where the exponent is related to the preset gravity exponent gamma. Similarly, the urban fraction decays exponentially, again determined by gamma. The population density gradient can be related to radial fractality and it turns out that the typical exponents imply that cities are basically zero-dimensional. Increasing the gravity exponent leads to extreme compactness and the loss of radial symmetry. We study the shape of the major central cluster by means of another three fractal dimensions and find that overall its fractality is dominated by the size and the influence of gamma is minor. The fundamental allometry, between population and area of the major central cluster, is related to the gravity exponent but restricted to the case of higher densities in large cities. We argue that cities are shaped by power-law proximity. We complement the numerical analysis by economics arguments employing travel costs as well as housing rent determined by supply and demand. Our work contributes to the understanding of gravitational effects, radial gradients, and urban morphology. The model allows to generate and investigate city structures under laboratory conditions.
KW  - Gravity models
KW  - population density
KW  - urban fraction
KW  - fractal geometry
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319843534
SN  - 2399-8083
SN  - 2399-8091
VL  - 48
IS  - 1
SP  - 43
EP  - 59
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ganzenmüller, Raphael
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Sectoral performance analysis of national greenhouse gas emission inventories by means of neural networks
JF  - Science of The Total Environment
N2  - Annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased more than threefold between 1950 and 2014, posing a major threat to the integrity of the entire earth system and subsequently to humankind. Consequently, roadmaps towards low-carbon pathways are urgently needed. Our study contributes to a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of country based emission patterns and uses them to discuss prospective low-carbon pathways for countries. As availability of databases on sectoral emissions substantially increased, we employ machine learning techniques to classify emission features and pathways. By doing so, 18 representative emission patterns are derived. Overall emissions from seven sectors and for 167 countries covering the time span from 1950 to 2014 have been used in the analyses. The following significant trends can be observed: a) increasing per capita emissions due to growing fossil fuel use in many parts of the world, b) a decline in per capita emissions in some countries, and c) a shift in the emission shares, i.e., a reduction of agricultural and land use contributions in certain regions. Using the emission patterns, their dynamics, and best performing countries as role models, we show the possibility for gaining a decent human development without significantly increasing per capita emissions.
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.311
IS  - 656
SP  - 80
EP  - 89
PB  - Elsevier
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rabbi, Sifat E.
A1  - Shant, Reza
A1  - Karmakar, Sourav
A1  - Habib, Azhar
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Regional mapping of climate variability index and identifying
JF  - Environment, development and sustainability : a multidisciplinary approach to the theory and practice of sustainable development
N2  - Studies conducted in Bangladesh so far did not unequivocally identify the modus operandi of local farmers to perceive and experience the climate variability at a national scale. Hence, this study aims to decipher local farmer's perception on climate variability for the last 10 years, by constructing climate variability index (CVI). Additionally, this study demystified the socio-economic determinants for influencing farmer perception regarding climate variability as well as its impact on their livelihoods. The study was designed on a cross-sectional data through a country-wide primary survey of 16,053 households who were largely dependent on agriculture. A weighted index was constructed for mapping the regional climate variability using model-builder programming in ArcGIS. Also, a multivariable probit model was employed to identify the factors influencing farmers' perception and resulting impact of climate variability on their livelihoods. According to local farmer's perception, the CVI mapping identified that Bangladesh experienced variegated climatic variability since last 10 years. However, local farmer's perception varied with different socio-economic factors like gender, education, farmer's category, credit, monthly income and access to media. Moreover, landless, small and medium farm holders were more aware of the local climate variability and eventually, they also experienced the higher influence of climate variability on their livelihoods. Since an effective mapping of regional climate variability is a sine qua non to devise region specific policies, this study will facilitate the government to determine its priorities, formulate efficacious strategies and thereby help to adapt with future climate-induced risks and vulnerabilities.
KW  - Farmer's climate variability perception
KW  - Climate variability index
KW  - Mapping
KW  - Socio-economic factors
KW  - Bangladesh
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-01104-2
SN  - 1387-585X
SN  - 1573-2975
VL  - 23
IS  - 7
SP  - 11050
EP  - 11066
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Landholm, David M.
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Wegmann, Peter
A1  - Romero Sanchez, Miguel Antonio
A1  - Suarez Salazar, Juan Carlos
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Reducing deforestation and improving livestock productivity: greenhouse gas mitigation potential of silvopastoral systems in Caqueta
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - Colombia's agriculture, forestry and other land use sector accounts for nearly half of its total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The importance of smallholder deforestation is comparatively high in relation to its regional counterparts, and livestock agriculture represents the largest driver of primary forest depletion. Silvopastoral systems (SPSs) are presented as agroecological solutions that synergistically enhance livestock productivity, improve local farmers' livelihoods and hold the potential to reduce pressure on forest conversion. The department of Caquetá represents Colombia's most important deforestation hotspot. Targeting smallholder livestock farms through survey data, in this work we investigate the GHG mitigation potential of implementing SPSs for smallholder farms in this region. Specifically, we assess whether the carbon sequestration taking place in the soil and biomass of SPSs is sufficient to offset the per-hectare increase in livestock GHG emissions resulting from higher stocking rates. To address these questions we use data on livestock population characteristics and historic land cover changes reported from a survey covering 158 farms and model the carbon sequestration occurring in three different scenarios of progressively-increased SPS complexity using the CO2 fix model. We find that, even with moderate tree planting densities, the implementation of SPSs can reduce GHG emissions by 2.6 Mg CO2e ha−1 yr−1 in relation to current practices, while increasing agriculture productivity and contributing to the restoration of severely degraded landscapes.
KW  - deforestation
KW  - silvopastoral systems
KW  - greenhouse gas emissions
KW  - livestock
KW  - carbon sequestration
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3db6
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 14
IS  - 11
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Quantifying the effect of sea level rise and flood defence-a point process perspective on coastal flood damage
JF  - Natural hazards and earth system sciences
N2  - In contrast to recent advances in projecting sea levels, estimations about the economic impact of sea level rise are vague. Nonetheless, they are of great importance for policy making with regard to adaptation and greenhouse-gas mitigation. Since the damage is mainly caused by extreme events, we propose a stochastic framework to estimate the monetary losses from coastal floods in a confined region. For this purpose, we follow a Peak-over-Threshold approach employing a Poisson point process and the Generalised Pareto Distribution. By considering the effect of sea level rise as well as potential adaptation scenarios on the involved parameters, we are able to study the development of the annual damage. An application to the city of Copenhagen shows that a doubling of losses can be expected from a mean sea level increase of only 11 cm. In general, we find that for varying parameters the expected losses can be well approximated by one of three analytical expressions depending on the extreme value parameters. These findings reveal the complex interplay of the involved parameters and allow conclusions of fundamental relevance. For instance, we show that the damage typically increases faster than the sea level rise itself. This in turn can be of great importance for the assessment of sea level rise impacts on the global scale. Our results are accompanied by an assessment of uncertainty, which reflects the stochastic nature of extreme events. While the absolute value of uncertainty about the flood damage increases with rising mean sea levels, we find that it decreases in relation to the expected damage.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-559-2016
SN  - 1561-8633
VL  - 16
SP  - 559
EP  - 576
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Quantifying the effect of sea level rise and flood defence
BT  - a point process perspective on coastal flood damage
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - In contrast to recent advances in projecting sea levels, estimations about the economic impact of sea level rise are vague. Nonetheless, they are of great importance for policy making with regard to adaptation and greenhouse-gas mitigation. Since the damage is mainly caused by extreme events, we propose a stochastic framework to estimate the monetary losses from coastal floods in a confined region. For this purpose, we follow a Peak-over-Threshold approach employing a Poisson point process and the Generalised Pareto Distribution. By considering the effect of sea level rise as well as potential adaptation scenarios on the involved parameters, we are able to study the development of the annual damage. An application to the city of Copenhagen shows that a doubling of losses can be expected from a mean sea level increase of only 11 cm. In general, we find that for varying parameters the expected losses can be well approximated by one of three analytical expressions depending on the extreme value parameters. These findings reveal the complex interplay of the involved parameters and allow conclusions of fundamental relevance. For instance, we show that the damage typically increases faster than the sea level rise itself. This in turn can be of great importance for the assessment of sea level rise impacts on the global scale. Our results are accompanied by an assessment of uncertainty, which reflects the stochastic nature of extreme events. While the absolute value of uncertainty about the flood damage increases with rising mean sea levels, we find that it decreases in relation to the expected damage.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 559 
KW  - climate-change
KW  - North-Sea
KW  - extremes
KW  - costs
KW  - 21st-Century
KW  - adaptation
KW  - statistics
KW  - impacts
KW  - trends
KW  - cities
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412405
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 559
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - On the statistics of urban heat island intensity
JF  - Geophysical research letters
N2  - We perform a systematic study of all cities in Europe to assess the Urban Heat Island (UHI) intensity by means of remotely sensed land surface temperature data. Defining cities as spatial clusters of urban land cover, we investigate the relationships of the UHI intensity, with the cluster size and the temperature of the surroundings. Our results show that in Europe, the UHI intensity in summer has a strong correlation with the cluster size, which can be well fitted by an empirical sigmoid model. Furthermore, we find a novel seasonality of the UHI intensity for individual clusters in the form of hysteresis-like curves. We characterize the shape and identify apparent regional patterns.
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/2013GL057320
SN  - 0094-8276
SN  - 1944-8007
VL  - 40
IS  - 20
SP  - 5486
EP  - 5491
PB  - American Geophysical Union
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - THES
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Neuronale Netze und qualitative Wissensbasen in der integrativen Umweltsystemanalyse
Y1  - 2000
SN  - 3-89825-033-4
PB  - dissertation.de
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Interplay between diets, health, and climate change
JF  - Sustainability
N2  - The world is facing a triple burden of undernourishment, obesity, and environmental impacts from agriculture while nourishing its population. This burden makes sustainable nourishment of the growing population a global challenge. Addressing this challenge requires an understanding of the interplay between diets, health, and associated environmental impacts (e.g., climate change). For this, we identify 11 typical diets that represent dietary habits worldwide for the last five decades. Plant-source foods provide most of all three macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) in developing countries. In contrast, animal-source foods provide a majority of protein and fat in developed ones. The identified diets deviate from the recommended healthy diet with either too much (e.g., red meat) or too little (e.g., fruits and vegetables) food and nutrition supply. The total calorie supplies are lower than required for two diets. Sugar consumption is higher than recommended for five diets. Three and five diets consist of larger-than-recommended carbohydrate and fat shares, respectively. Four diets with a large share of animal-source foods exceed the recommended value of red meat. Only two diets consist of at least 400 gm/cap/day of fruits and vegetables while accounting for food waste. Prevalence of undernourishment and underweight dominates in the diets with lower calories. In comparison, a higher prevalence of obesity is observed for diets with higher calories with high shares of sugar, fat, and animal-source foods. However, embodied emissions in the diets do not show a clear relation with calorie supplies and compositions. Two high-calorie diets embody more than 1.5 t CO<mml:semantics>2</mml:semantics>eq/cap/yr, and two low-calorie diets embody around 1 t CO<mml:semantics>2</mml:semantics>eq/cap/yr. Our analysis highlights that sustainable and healthy diets can serve the purposes of both nourishing the population and, at the same time, reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.
KW  - dietary patterns
KW  - healthy diets
KW  - embodied emissions
KW  - diet shifts
KW  - sustainable diets
KW  - emission intensity
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093878
SN  - 2071-1050
VL  - 12
IS  - 9
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Athare, Tushar Ramchandra
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Singh, S. R. K.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - India consists of multiple food systems with scoioeconomic and environmental variations
JF  - PLOS ONE / Public Library of Science
N2  - Agriculture in India accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and uses significant land and water. Various socioeconomic factors and food subsidies influence diets in India. Indian food systems face the challenge of sustainably nourishing the 1.3 billion population. However, existing studies focus on a few food system components, and holistic analysis is still missing. We identify Indian food systems covering six food system components: food consumption, production, processing, policy, environmental footprints, and socioeconomic factors from the latest Indian household consumer expenditure survey. We identify 10 Indian food systems using k-means cluster analysis on 15 food system indicators belonging to the six components. Based on the major source of calorie intake, we classify the ten food systems into production-based (3), subsidy-based (3), and market-based (4) food systems. Home-produced and subsidized food contribute up to 2000 kcal/consumer unit (CU)/day and 1651 kcal/CU/day, respectively, in these food systems. The calorie intake of 2158 to 3530 kcal/CU/day in the food systems reveals issues of malnutrition in India. Environmental footprints are commensurate with calorie intake in the food systems. Embodied GHG, land footprint, and water footprint estimates range from 1.30 to 2.19 kg CO(2)eq/CU/day, 3.89 to 6.04 m(2)/CU/day, and 2.02 to 3.16 m(3)/CU/day, respectively. Our study provides a holistic understanding of Indian food systems for targeted nutritional interventions on household malnutrition in India while also protecting planetary health.
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270342
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 17
IS  - 8
PB  - PLoS
CY  - San Fransisco
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tekken, Vera
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Increasing pressure, declining water and climate change in north-eastern Morocco
JF  - Journal of coastal conservation : planning and management
N2  - The coastal stretch of north-eastern Mediterranean Morocco holds vitally important ecological, social, and economic functions. The implementation of large-scale luxury tourism resorts shall push socio-economic development and facilitate the shift from a mainly agrarian to a service economy. Sufficient water availability and intact beaches are among the key requirements for the successful realization of regional development plans. The water situation is already critical, additional water-intense sectors could overstrain the capacity of water resources. Further, coastal erosion caused by sea-level rise is projected. Regional climate change is observable, and must be included in regional water management. Long-term climate trends are assessed for the larger region (Moulouya basin) and for the near-coastal zone at Saidia. The amount of additional water demand is assessed for the large-dimensioned Saidia resort; including the monthly, seasonal and annual tourist per capita water need under inclusion of irrigated golf courses and garden areas. A shift of climate patterns is observed, a lengthening of the dry summer season, and as well a significant decline of annual precipitation. Thus, current water scarcity is mainly human-induced; however, climate change will aggravate the situation. As a consequence, severe environmental damage due to water scarcity is likely and could impinge on the quality of local tourism. The re-adjustment of current management routines is therefore essential. Possible adjustments are discussed and the analysis concludes with management recommendations for innovative regional water management of tourism facilities.
KW  - North-eastern Morocco
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Coastal zone
KW  - Luxury tourism
KW  - Water demand
KW  - Adaptation
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-013-0234-7
SN  - 1400-0350
VL  - 17
IS  - 3
SP  - 379
EP  - 388
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kriewald, Steffen
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Ros, Anselmo Garcia Cantu
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Hungry cities: how local food self-sufficiency relates to climate change, diets, and urbanisation
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - Using a newly developed model approach and combining it with remote sensing, population, and climate data, first insights are provided into how local diets, urbanisation, and climate change relates to local urban food self-sufficiency. In plain terms, by utilizing the global peri-urban (PU) food production potential approximately lbn urban residents (30% of global urban population) can be locally nourished, whereby further urbanisation is by far the largest pressure factor on PU agriculture, followed by a change of diets, and climate change. A simple global food transport model which optimizes transport and neglects differences in local emission intensities indicates that CO2 emissions related to food transport can be reduced by a factor of 10.
KW  - peri-urban agriculture
KW  - urbanization
KW  - dietary patterns
KW  - agricultural productivity
KW  - food systems
KW  - local food
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2d56
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 14
IS  - 9
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Böttle, Markus
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - How changing sea level extremes and protection measures alter coastal flood damages
JF  - Water resources research
N2  - While sea level rise is one of the most likely consequences of climate change, the provoked costs remain highly uncertain. Based on a block-maxima approach, we provide a stochastic framework to estimate the increase of expected damages with sea level rise as well as with meteorological changes and demonstrate the application to two case studies. In addition, the uncertainty of the damage estimations due to the stochastic nature of extreme events is studied. Starting with the probability distribution of extreme flood levels, we calculate the distribution of implied damages in a specific region employing stage-damage functions. Universal relations of the expected damages and their standard deviation, which demonstrate the importance of the shape of the damage function, are provided. We also calculate how flood protection reduces the damages leading to a more complex picture, where the extreme value behavior plays a fundamental role. Citation: Boettle, M., D. Rybski, and J. P. Kropp (2013), How changing sea level extremes and protection measures alter coastal flood damages, Water Resour. Res., 49, 1199-1210, doi: 10.1002/wrcr.20108.
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20108
SN  - 0043-1397
VL  - 49
IS  - 3
SP  - 1199
EP  - 1210
PB  - American Geophysical Union
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Krummenauer, Linda
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Holsten, Anne
A1  - Walther, Carsten
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Global drivers of minimum mortality temperatures in cities
JF  - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man
N2  - Human mortality shows a pronounced temperature dependence. The minimum mortality temperature (MMT) as a characteristic point of the temperature-mortality relationship is influenced by many factors. As MMT estimates are based on case studies, they are sporadic, limited to data-rich regions, and their drivers have not yet been clearly identified across case studies. This impedes the elaboration of spatially comprehensive impact studies on heat-related mortality and hampers the temporal transfer required to assess climate change impacts. Using 400 MMTs from cities, we systematically establish a generalised model that is able to estimate MMTs (in daily apparent temperature) for cities, based on a set of climatic, topographic and socio-economic drivers. A sigmoid model prevailed against alternative model setups due to having the lowest Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) and the smallest RMSE. We find the long-term climate, the elevation, and the socio-economy to be relevant drivers of our MMT sample within the non-linear parametric regression model. A first model application estimated MMTs for 599 European cities ( >100 000 inhabitants) and reveals a pronounced decrease in MMTs (27.8-16 degrees C) from southern to northern cities. Disruptions of this pattern across regions of similar mean temperatures can be explained by socio-economic standards as noted for central eastern Europe. Our alternative method allows to approximate MMTs independently from the availability of daily mortality records. For the first time, a quantification of climatic and non-climatic MMT drivers has been achieved, which allows to consider changes in socio-economic conditions and climate. This work contributes to the comparability among MMTs beyond location-specific and regional limits and, hence, towards a spatially comprehensive impact assessment for heat-related mortality.
KW  - City population
KW  - Minimum mortality temperature
KW  - Climate
KW  - Topography
KW  - Socio-economy
KW  - Sigmoid model
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.07.366
SN  - 0048-9697
SN  - 1879-1026
VL  - 695
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Krummenauer, Linda
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Future heat adaptation and exposure among urban populations and why a prospering economy alone won’t save us
JF  - Scientific reports
N2  - When inferring on the magnitude of future heat-related mortality due to climate change, human adaptation to heat should be accounted for. We model long-term changes in minimum mortality temperatures (MMT), a well-established metric denoting the lowest risk of heat-related mortality, as a function of climate change and socio-economic progress across 3820 cities. Depending on the combination of climate trajectories and socio-economic pathways evaluated, by 2100 the risk to human health is expected to decline in 60% to 80% of the cities against contemporary conditions. This is caused by an average global increase in MMTs driven by long-term human acclimatisation to future climatic conditions and economic development of countries. While our adaptation model suggests that negative effects on health from global warming can broadly be kept in check, the trade-offs are highly contingent to the scenario path and location-specific. For high-forcing climate scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5) the maintenance of uninterrupted high economic growth by 2100 is a hard requirement to increase MMTs and level-off the negative health effects from additional scenario-driven heat exposure. Choosing a 2 degrees C-compatible climate trajectory alleviates the dependence on fast growth, leaving room for a sustainable economy, and leads to higher reductions of mortality risk.
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99757-0
SN  - 2045-2322
VL  - 11
IS  - 1
PB  - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hic, Ceren
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Food Surplus and Its Climate Burdens
JF  - Geological Society of America bulletin
N2  - Avoiding food loss and waste may counteract the increasing food demand and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector. This is crucial because of limited options available to increase food production. In the year 2010, food availability was 20% higher than was required on a global scale. Thus, a more sustainable food production and adjusted consumption would have positive environmental effects. This study provides a systematic approach to estimate consumer level food waste on a country scale and globally, based on food availability and requirements. The food requirement estimation considers demographic development, body weights, and physical activity levels. Surplus between food availability and requirements of a given country is considered as food waste. The global food requirement changed from 2,300 kcal/cap/day to 2,400 kcal/cap/day during the last 50 years, while food surplus grew from 310 kcal/cap/day to 510 kcal/cap/day. Similarly, GHG emissions related to the food surplus increased from 130 Mt CO2eq/yr to 530 Mt CO2eq/yr, an increase of more than 300%. Moreover, the global food surplus may increase up to 850 kcal/cap/day, while the total food requirement will increase only by 2%-20% by 2050. Consequently, GHG emissions associated with the food waste may also increase tremendously to 1.9-2.5 Gt CO2eq/yr.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b05088
SN  - 0013-936X
SN  - 1520-5851
VL  - 50
SP  - 4269
EP  - 4277
PB  - American Chemical Society
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Food self-sufficiency across scales: How local can we go?
JF  - Environmental science & technology
N2  - This study explores the potential for regions to shift to a local food supply using food self-sufficiency (FSS) as an indicator. We considered a region food self-sufficient when its total calorie production is enough to meet its demand. For future scenarios, we considered population growth, dietary changes, improved feed conversion efficiency, climate change, and crop yield increments. Starting at the 5' resolution, we investigated FSS from the lowest administrative levels to continents. Globally, about 1.9 billion people are self-sufficient within their 5' grid, while about 1 billion people from Asia and Africa require cross-continental agricultural trade in 2000. By closing yield gaps, these regions can achieve FSS, which also reduces international trade and increases a self-sufficient population in a 5' grid to 2.9 billion. The number of people depending on international trade will vary between 1.5 and 6 billion by 2050. Climate change may increase the need for international agricultural trade by 4% to 16%.
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1021/es5005939
SN  - 0013-936X
SN  - 1520-5851
VL  - 48
IS  - 16
SP  - 9463
EP  - 9470
PB  - American Chemical Society
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Olonscheck, Mady
A1  - Walther, Carsten
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Feasibility of energy reduction targets under climate change: The case of the residential heating energy sector of the Netherlands
JF  - Energy
N2  - In order to achieve meaningful climate protection targets at the global scale, each country is called to set national energy policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. By calculating the monthly heating energy demand of dwellings in the Netherlands, our case study country, we contrast the results with the corresponding aspired national targets. Considering different future population scenarios, renovation measures and temperature variations, we show that a near zero energy demand in 2050 could only be reached with very ambitious renovation measures. While the goal of reducing the energy demand of the building sector by 50% until 2030 compared to 1990 seems feasible for most provinces and months in the minimum scenario, it is impossible in our scenario with more pessimistic yet still realistic assumptions regarding future developments. Compared to the current value, the annual renovation rate per province would need to be at least doubled in order to reach the 2030 target independent of reasonable climatic and population changes in the future. Our findings also underline the importance of policy measures as the annual renovation rate is a key influencing factor regarding the reduction of the heating energy demand in dwellings. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Heating energy demand
KW  - Reduction targets
KW  - Residential building stock
KW  - Renovation
KW  - The Netherlands
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.07.080
SN  - 0360-5442
SN  - 1873-6785
VL  - 90
SP  - 560
EP  - 569
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Estimating investments in knowledge and planning activities for adaptation in developing countries: an empirical approach
JF  - Climate & development
N2  - Costs of adaptation in the developing world have been mostly equated to those of climate proofing infrastructure under the assumption of unconstrained knowledge and planning capacities. To correct this, we introduce a cost-scaling methodology estimating sectoral investments to enhance the knowledge and planning capacities of countries based on an empirical collection of 385 climate-related projects. We estimate that circa 9.2 billion USD are required for financing knowledge and planning activities in developing countries in 2015. The agricultural and water sectors demand the higher investments ? 3.8 and 3.5 billion USD, respectively. Average investments between 2015 and 2050 are projected at 7 billion USD per year ? the largest fraction of which (4 billion) in Africa. Investments in this study were found to constitute approximately 40%, 20?60% and 5?15% of previous cost estimates to climate-proof infrastructure in the agricultural, water, and coastal sectors, respectively. The effort to finance the knowledge and planning capacities in developing countries is therefore not marginal relative to the costs of adapting infrastructure. The findings underline the potential of using empirical collections of climate-related projects for adaptation cost assessments as complementary to process and economic models.
KW  - Adaptation process
KW  - project database
KW  - administrative units
KW  - costs of infrastructure
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2018.1562865
SN  - 1756-5529
SN  - 1756-5537
VL  - 11
IS  - 9
SP  - 755
EP  - 764
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Athare, Tushar Ramchandra
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Environmental implications and socioeconomic characterisation of Indian diets
JF  - The science of the total environment
N2  - India is facing a double burden of malnourishment with co-existences of under- and over-nourishment. Various socioeconomic factors play an essential role in determining dietary choices. Agriculture is one of the major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in India, contributing 18% of total emissions. It also consumes freshwater and uses land significantly. We identify eleven Indian diets by applying k-means cluster analysis on latest data from the Indian household consumer expenditure survey. The diets vary in calorie intake [2289-3218 kcal/Consumer Unit (CU)/day] and dietary composition. Estimated embodied GHG emissions in the diets range from 1.36 to 3.62 kg CO2eq./CU/day, land footprint from 4 to 5.45 m(2)/CU/day, whereas water footprint varies from 2.13 to 2.97m(3)/CU/day. Indian diets deviate from a healthy reference diet either with too much or too little consumption of certain food groups. Overall, cereals, sugar, and dairy products intake are higher. In contrast, the consumption of fruits and vegetables, pulses, and nuts is lower than recommended. Our study contributes to deriving required polices for the sustainable transformation of food systems in India to eliminate malnourishment and to reduce the environmental implications of the food systems. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KW  - Indian diets
KW  - GHG emissions
KW  - land and water footprint
KW  - healthy diets
KW  - socioeconomic factors
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139881
SN  - 0048-9697
SN  - 1879-1026
VL  - 737
PB  - Elsevier Science
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Embodied greenhouse gas emissions in Diets
JF  - PLoS one
N2  - Changing food consumption patterns and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. The agricultural sector is one of the major GHG emitters and thus holds a large potential for climate change mitigation through optimal management and dietary changes. We assess this potential, project emissions, and investigate dietary patterns and their changes globally on a per country basis between 1961 and 2007. Sixteen representative and spatially differentiated patterns with a per capita calorie intake ranging from 1,870 to >3,400 kcal/day were derived. Detailed analyses show that low calorie diets are decreasing worldwide, while in parallel diet composition is changing as well: a discernable shift towards more balanced diets in developing countries can be observed and steps towards more meat rich diets as a typical characteristics in developed countries. Low calorie diets which are mainly observable in developing countries show a similar emission burden than moderate and high calorie diets. This can be explained by a less efficient calorie production per unit of GHG emissions in developing countries. Very high calorie diets are common in the developed world and exhibit high total per capita emissions of 3.7-6.1 kg CO2eq./day due to high carbon intensity and high intake of animal products. In case of an unbridled demographic growth and changing dietary patterns the projected emissions from agriculture will approach 20 Gt CO2eq./yr by 2050.
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062228
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 8
IS  - 5
PB  - PLoS
CY  - San Fransisco
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Rösser, Dominik E.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Embodied crop calories in animal products
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - Increases in animal products consumption and the associated environmental consequences have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. Consequences of such increases include rises in greenhouse gas emissions, growth of consumptive water use, and perturbation of global nutrients cycles. These consequences vary spatially depending on livestock types, their densities and their production system. In this letter, we investigate the spatial distribution of embodied crop calories in animal products. On a global scale, about 40% of the global crop calories are used as livestock feed (we refer to this ratio as crop balance for livestock) and about 4 kcal of crop products are used to generate 1 kcal of animal products (embodied crop calories of around 4). However, these values vary greatly around the world. In some regions, more than 100% of the crops produced is required to feed livestock requiring national or international trade to meet the deficit in livestock feed. Embodied crop calories vary between less than 1 for 20% of the livestock raising areas worldwide and greater than 10 for another 20% of the regions. Low values of embodied crop calories are related to production systems for ruminants based on fodder and forage, while large values are usually associated with production systems for non-ruminants fed on crop products. Additionally, we project the future feed demand considering three scenarios: (a) population growth, (b) population growth and changes in human dietary patterns and (c) changes in population, dietary patterns and feed conversion efficiency. When considering dietary changes, we project the global feed demand to be almost doubled (1.8-2.3 times) by 2050 compared to 2000, which would force us to produce almost equal or even more crops to raise our livestock than to directly nourish ourselves in the future. Feed demand is expected to increase over proportionally in Africa, South-Eastern Asia and Southern Asia, putting additional stress on these regions.
KW  - crop products
KW  - animal calories
KW  - dietary patterns
KW  - livestock feed
KW  - gridded data
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/044044
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 8
IS  - 4
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ribeiro, Haroldo V.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Effects of changing population or density on urban carbon dioxide emissions
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - The question of whether urbanization contributes to increasing carbon dioxide emissions has been mainly investigated via scaling relationships with population or population density. However, these approaches overlook the correlations between population and area, and ignore possible interactions between these quantities. Here, we propose a generalized framework that simultaneously considers the effects of population and area along with possible interactions between these urban metrics. Our results significantly improve the description of emissions and reveal the coupled role between population and density on emissions. These models show that variations in emissions associated with proportionate changes in population or density may not only depend on the magnitude of these changes but also on the initial values of these quantities. For US areas, the larger the city, the higher is the impact of changing its population or density on its emissions; but population changes always have a greater effect on emissions than population density.
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11184-y
SN  - 2041-1723
VL  - 10
PB  - Nature Publ. Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Landholm, David M.
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Diverging forest land use dynamics induced by armed conflict across the tropics
JF  - Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions
N2  - Armed conflicts trigger region-specific mechanisms that affect land use change. Deforestation is presented as one of the most common negative environmental impacts resulting from armed conflicts, with relevant consequences in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and loss of ecosystem services. However, the impact of armed conflict on forests is complex and may simultaneously lead to positive and negative environmental outcomes, i.e. forest regrowth and deforestation, in different regions even within a country. We investigate the impact that armed conflict exerted over forest dynamics at different spatial scales in Colombia and for the global tropics during the period 1992–2015. Through the analysis of its internally displaced population (departures) our results suggest that, albeit finding forest regrowth in some municipalities, the Colombian conflict predominantly exerted a negative impact on its forests. A further examination of georeferenced fighting locations in Colombia and across the globe shows that conflict areas were 8 and 4 times more likely to undergo deforestation, respectively, in the following years in relation to average deforestation rates. This study represents a municipality level, long-term spatial analysis of the diverging effects the Colombian conflict exerted over its forest dynamics over two distinct periods of increasing and decreasing conflict intensity. Moreover, it presents the first quantified estimate of conflict's negative impact on forest ecosystems across the globe. The relationship between armed conflict and land use change is of global relevance given the recent increase of armed conflicts across the world and the importance of a possible exacerbation of armed conflicts and migration as climate change impacts increase.
KW  - Armed conflict
KW  - Deforestation
KW  - Internally displaced persons
KW  - Migration
KW  - Land use change drivers
KW  - Colombian conflict
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.03.006
SN  - 0959-3780
SN  - 1872-9495
VL  - 56
SP  - 86
EP  - 94
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Ros, Anselmo Garcia Cantu
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Distance-weighted city growth
JF  - PHYSICAL REVIEW E
N2  - Urban agglomerations exhibit complex emergent features of which Zipf&rsquo;s law, i.e., a power-law size distribution, and fractality may be regarded as the most prominent ones. We propose a simplistic model for the generation of citylike structures which is solely based on the assumption that growth is more likely to take place close to inhabited space. The model involves one parameter which is an exponent determining how strongly the attraction decays with the distance. In addition, the model is run iteratively so that existing clusters can grow (together) and new ones can emerge. The model is capable of reproducing the size distribution and the fractality of the boundary of the largest cluster. Although the power-law distribution depends on both, the imposed exponent and the iteration, the fractality seems to be independent of the former and only depends on the latter. Analyzing land-cover data, we estimate the parameter-value gamma approximate to 2.5 for Paris and its surroundings. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.87.042114
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.042114
SN  - 1539-3755
VL  - 87
IS  - 4
PB  - AMER PHYSICAL SOC
CY  - COLLEGE PK
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lissner, Tabea Katharina
A1  - Sullivan, C. A.
A1  - Reusser, D. E.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Determining regional limits and sectoral constraints for water use
JF  - Hydrology and earth system sciences : HESS
N2  - Water is an essential input to the majority of human activities. Often, access to sufficient water resources is limited by quality and infrastructure aspects, rather than by resource availability alone, and each activity has different requirements regarding the nature of these aspects. This paper develops an integrated approach to assess the adequacy of water resources for the three major water users: the domestic, agricultural and industrial sectors. Additionally, we include environmental water requirements. We first outline the main determinants of water adequacy for each sector. Subsequently, we present an integrated approach using fuzzy logic, which allows assessing sector-specific as well as overall water adequacy. We implement the approach in two case study settings to exemplify the main features of the approach. Using results from two climate models and two forcing RCPs (representative concentration pathways), as well as population projections, we further assess the impacts of climate change in combination with population growth on the adequacy of water resources. The results provide an important step forward in determining the most relevant factors, impeding adequate access to water, which remains an important challenge in many regions of the world. The methodology allows one to directly identify the factors that are most decisive in determining the adequacy of water in each region, pointing towards the most efficient intervention points to improve conditions. Our findings underline the fact that, in addition to water volumes, water quality is a limitation for all sectors and, especially for the environmental sector, high levels of pollution are a threat to water adequacy.
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-4039-2014
SN  - 1027-5606
SN  - 1607-7938
VL  - 18
IS  - 10
SP  - 4039
EP  - 4052
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Damage functions for climate-related hazards: unification and uncertainty analysis
JF  - Natural hazards and earth system sciences
N2  - Most climate change impacts manifest in the form of natural hazards. Damage assessment typically relies on damage functions that translate the magnitude of extreme events to a quantifiable damage. In practice, the availability of damage functions is limited due to a lack of data sources and a lack of understanding of damage processes. The study of the characteristics of damage functions for different hazards could strengthen the theoretical foundation of damage functions and support their development and validation. Accordingly, we investigate analogies of damage functions for coastal flooding and for wind storms and identify a unified approach. This approach has general applicability for granular portfolios and may also be applied, for example, to heat-related mortality. Moreover, the unification enables the transfer of methodology between hazards and a consistent treatment of uncertainty. This is demonstrated by a sensitivity analysis on the basis of two simple case studies (for coastal flood and storm damage). The analysis reveals the relevance of the various uncertainty sources at varying hazard magnitude and on both the microscale and the macroscale level. Main findings are the dominance of uncertainty from the hazard magnitude and the persistent behaviour of intrinsic uncertainties on both scale levels. Our results shed light on the general role of uncertainties and provide useful insight for the application of the unified approach.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1189-2016
SN  - 1561-8633
VL  - 16
SP  - 1189
EP  - 1203
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Damage functions for climate-related hazards
BT  - unification and uncertainty analysis
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Most climate change impacts manifest in the form of natural hazards. Damage assessment typically relies on damage functions that translate the magnitude of extreme events to a quantifiable damage. In practice, the availability of damage functions is limited due to a lack of data sources and a lack of understanding of damage processes. The study of the characteristics of damage functions for different hazards could strengthen the theoretical foundation of damage functions and support their development and validation. Accordingly, we investigate analogies of damage functions for coastal flooding and for wind storms and identify a unified approach. This approach has general applicability for granular portfolios and may also be applied, for example, to heat-related mortality. Moreover, the unification enables the transfer of methodology between hazards and a consistent treatment of uncertainty. This is demonstrated by a sensitivity analysis on the basis of two simple case studies (for coastal flood and storm damage). The analysis reveals the relevance of the various uncertainty sources at varying hazard magnitude and on both the microscale and the macroscale level. Main findings are the dominance of uncertainty from the hazard magnitude and the persistent behaviour of intrinsic uncertainties on both scale levels. Our results shed light on the general role of uncertainties and provide useful insight for the application of the unified approach.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 534 
KW  - coastal flood damage
KW  - sea-level rise
KW  - of-the-art
KW  - sensitivity-analysis
KW  - natural hazards
KW  - storm damage
KW  - model
KW  - wind
KW  - vulnerability
KW  - buildings
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410184
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 534
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Rybski, Diego
T1  - Damage and protection cost curves for coastal floods within the 600 largest European cities
JF  - Scientific Data
N2  - The economic assessment of the impacts of storm surges and sea-level rise in coastal cities requires high-level information on the damage and protection costs associated with varying flood heights. We provide a systematically and consistently calculated dataset of macroscale damage and protection cost curves for the 600 largest European coastal cities opening the perspective for a wide range of applications. Offering the first comprehensive dataset to include the costs of dike protection, we provide the underpinning information to run comparative assessments of costs and benefits of coastal adaptation. Aggregate cost curves for coastal flooding at the city-level are commonly regarded as by-products of impact assessments and are generally not published as a standalone dataset. Hence, our work also aims at initiating a more critical discussion on the availability and derivation of cost curves.
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.34
SN  - 2052-4463
VL  - 5
PB  - Nature Publ. Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Boettle, Markus
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Rybski, Diego
T1  - Damage and protection cost curves for coastal floods within the 600 largest European cities
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - The economic assessment of the impacts of storm surges and sea-level rise in coastal cities requires high-level information on the damage and protection costs associated with varying flood heights. We provide a systematically and consistently calculated dataset of macroscale damage and protection cost curves for the 600 largest European coastal cities opening the perspective for a wide range of applications. Offering the first comprehensive dataset to include the costs of dike protection, we provide the underpinning information to run comparative assessments of costs and benefits of coastal adaptation. Aggregate cost curves for coastal flooding at the city-level are commonly regarded as by-products of impact assessments and are generally not published as a standalone dataset. Hence, our work also aims at initiating a more critical discussion on the availability and derivation of cost curves.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 938 
KW  - sea-level rise
KW  - topographic data
KW  - climate-change
KW  - adaptation
KW  - scale
KW  - exposure
KW  - model
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-459672
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 938
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lenk, Stephan
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Heidrich, Oliver
A1  - Dawson, Richard J.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Costs of sea dikes - regressions and uncertainty estimates
JF  - Natural hazards and earth system sciences
N2  - Failure to consider the costs of adaptation strategies can be seen by decision makers as a barrier to implementing coastal protection measures. In order to validate adaptation strategies to sea-level rise in the form of coastal protection, a consistent and repeatable assessment of the costs is necessary. This paper significantly extends current knowledge on cost estimates by developing - and implementing using real coastal dike data - probabilistic functions of dike costs. Data from Canada and the Netherlands are analysed and related to published studies from the US, UK, and Vietnam in order to provide a reproducible estimate of typical sea dike costs and their uncertainty. We plot the costs divided by dike length as a function of height and test four different regression models. Our analysis shows that a linear function without intercept is sufficient to model the costs, i.e. fixed costs and higher-order contributions such as that due to the volume of core fill material are less significant. We also characterise the spread around the regression models which represents an uncertainty stemming from factors beyond dike length and height. Drawing an analogy with project cost overruns, we employ log-normal distributions and calculate that the range between 3x and x/3 contains 95% of the data, where x represents the corresponding regression value. We compare our estimates with previously published unit costs for other countries. We note that the unit costs depend not only on the country and land use (urban/non-urban) of the sites where the dikes are being constructed but also on characteristics included in the costs, e.g. property acquisition, utility relocation, and project management. This paper gives decision makers an order of magnitude on the protection costs, which can help to remove potential barriers to develop-ing adaptation strategies. Although the focus of this research is sea dikes, our approach is applicable and transferable to other adaptation measures.
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-765-2017
SN  - 1561-8633
VL  - 17
SP  - 765
EP  - 779
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Lenk, Stephan
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Heidrich, Oliver
A1  - Dawson, Richard J.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Costs of sea dikes
BT  - Regressions and uncertainty estimates
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Failure to consider the costs of adaptation strategies can be seen by decision makers as a barrier to implementing coastal protection measures. In order to validate adaptation strategies to sea-level rise in the form of coastal protection, a consistent and repeatable assessment of the costs is necessary. This paper significantly extends current knowledge on cost estimates by developing - and implementing using real coastal dike data - probabilistic functions of dike costs. Data from Canada and the Netherlands are analysed and related to published studies from the US, UK, and Vietnam in order to provide a reproducible estimate of typical sea dike costs and their uncertainty. We plot the costs divided by dike length as a function of height and test four different regression models. Our analysis shows that a linear function without intercept is sufficient to model the costs, i.e. fixed costs and higher-order contributions such as that due to the volume of core fill material are less significant. We also characterise the spread around the regression models which represents an uncertainty stemming from factors beyond dike length and height. Drawing an analogy with project cost overruns, we employ log-normal distributions and calculate that the range between 3x and x/3 contains 95% of the data, where x represents the corresponding regression value. We compare our estimates with previously published unit costs for other countries. We note that the unit costs depend not only on the country and land use (urban/non-urban) of the sites where the dikes are being constructed but also on characteristics included in the costs, e.g. property acquisition, utility relocation, and project management. This paper gives decision makers an order of magnitude on the protection costs, which can help to remove potential barriers to develop-ing adaptation strategies. Although the focus of this research is sea dikes, our approach is applicable and transferable to other adaptation measures.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 638 
KW  - coastal flood damage
KW  - level rise
KW  - climate
KW  - infrastructure
KW  - protection
KW  - Netherlands
KW  - strategies
KW  - overruns
KW  - hazards
KW  - losses
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418401
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 638
SP  - 765
EP  - 779
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Burghoff, Olaf
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Winter storms are the most costly natural hazard for European residential property. We compare four distinct storm damage functions with respect to their forecast accuracy and variability, with particular regard to the most severe winter storms. The analysis focuses on daily loss estimates under differing spatial aggregation, ranging from district to country level. We discuss the broad and heavily skewed distribution of insured losses posing difficulties for both the calibration and the evaluation of damage functions. From theoretical considerations, we provide a synthesis between the frequently discussed cubic wind–damage relationship and recent studies that report much steeper damage functions for European winter storms. The performance of the storm loss models is evaluated for two sources of wind gust data, direct observations by the German Weather Service and ERA-Interim reanalysis data. While the choice of gust data has little impact on the evaluation of German storm loss, spatially resolved coefficients of variation reveal dependence between model and data choice. The comparison shows that the probabilistic models by Heneka et al. (2006) and Prahl et al. (2012) both provide accurate loss predictions for moderate to extreme losses, with generally small coefficients of variation. We favour the latter model in terms of model applicability. Application of the versatile deterministic model by Klawa and Ulbrich (2003) should be restricted to extreme loss, for which it shows the least bias and errors comparable to the probabilistic model by Prahl et al. (2012).
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 492 
KW  - integrated kinetic-energy
KW  - residential structures
KW  - risk-assessment
KW  - wind speeds
KW  - data series
KW  - model
KW  - buildings
KW  - climate
KW  - losses
KW  - homogenization
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408119
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 492
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Burghoff, Olaf
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance
JF  - Natural hazards and earth system sciences
N2  - Winter storms are the most costly natural hazard for European residential property. We compare four distinct storm damage functions with respect to their forecast accuracy and variability, with particular regard to the most severe winter storms. The analysis focuses on daily loss estimates under differing spatial aggregation, ranging from district to country level. We discuss the broad and heavily skewed distribution of insured losses posing difficulties for both the calibration and the evaluation of damage functions. From theoretical considerations, we provide a synthesis between the frequently discussed cubic wind-damage relationship and recent studies that report much steeper damage functions for European winter storms. The performance of the storm loss models is evaluated for two sources of wind gust data, direct observations by the German Weather Service and ERA-Interim reanalysis data. While the choice of gust data has little impact on the evaluation of German storm loss, spatially resolved coefficients of variation reveal dependence between model and data choice. The comparison shows that the probabilistic models by Heneka et al. (2006) and Prahl et al. (2012) both provide accurate loss predictions for moderate to extreme losses, with generally small coefficients of variation. We favour the latter model in terms of model applicability. Application of the versatile deterministic model by Klawa and Ulbrich (2003) should be restricted to extreme loss, for which it shows the least bias and errors comparable to the probabilistic model by Prahl et al. (2012).
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-769-2015
SN  - 1561-8633
VL  - 15
IS  - 4
SP  - 769
EP  - 788
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Dawson, Richard J.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Comparing generic and case study damage functions
BT  - London storm-surge example
JF  - Natural hazards review
N2  - Two different approaches are used to assess the impacts associated with natural hazards and climate change in cities. A bottom-up approach uses high resolution data on constituent assets within the urban area. In contrast, a top-down approach uses less detailed information but is consequently more readily transferable. Here, we compare damage curves generated by each approach for coastal flooding in London. To compare them, we fit a log-logistic regression with three parameters to the calculated damage curves. We find that the functions are remarkably similar in their shape, albeit with different inflection points and a maximum damage that differs by 13%-25%. If rescaled, the curves agree almost exactly, which enables damage assessment to be undertaken following the calculation of the three parameters.
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000336
SN  - 1527-6988
SN  - 1527-6996
VL  - 21
IS  - 1
PB  - American Society of Civil Engineers
CY  - Reston
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Fischer, Günther
A1  - Velthuizen, Harrij van
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Closing yield gaps
BT  - how sustainable can we be?
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Global food production needs to be increased by 60-110% between 2005 and 2050 to meet growing food and feed demand. Intensification and/or expansion of agriculture are the two main options available to meet the growing crop demands. Land conversion to expand cultivated land increases GHG emissions and impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services. Closing yield gaps to attain potential yields may be a viable option to increase the global crop production. Traditional methods of agricultural intensification often have negative externalities. Therefore, there is a need to explore location-specific methods of sustainable agricultural intensification. We identified regions where the achievement of potential crop calorie production on currently cultivated land will meet the present and future food demand based on scenario analyses considering population growth and changes in dietary habits. By closing yield gaps in the current irrigated and rain-fed cultivated land, about 24% and 80% more crop calories can respectively be produced compared to 2000. Most countries will reach food self-sufficiency or improve their current food self-sufficiency levels if potential crop production levels are achieved. As a novel approach, we defined specific input and agricultural management strategies required to achieve the potential production by overcoming biophysical and socioeconomic constraints causing yield gaps. The management strategies include: fertilizers, pesticides, advanced soil management, land improvement, management strategies coping with weather induced yield variability, and improving market accessibility. Finally, we estimated the required fertilizers (N, P2O5, and K2O) to attain the potential yields. Globally, N-fertilizer application needs to increase by 45-73%, P2O5-fertilizer by 22-46%, and K2O-fertilizer by 2-3 times compared to the year 2010 to attain potential crop production. The sustainability of such agricultural intensification largely depends on the way management strategies for closing yield gaps are chosen and implemented.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 491 
KW  - climate-change
KW  - management
KW  - intensification
KW  - productivity
KW  - agriculture
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408105
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 491
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tekken, Vera
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Climate-Driven or Human-Induced indicating severe water scarcity in the Moulouya River Basin (Morocco)
JF  - Water
N2  - Many agriculture-based economies are increasingly under stress from climate change and socio-economic pressures. The excessive exploitation of natural resources still represents the standard procedure to achieve socio-economic development. In the area of the Moulouya river basin, Morocco, natural water availability represents a key resource for all economic activities. Agriculture represents the most important sector, and frequently occurring water deficits are aggravated by climate change. On the basis of historical trends taken from CRU TS 2.1, this paper analyses the impact of climate change on the per capita water availability under inclusion of population trends. The Climatic Water Balance (CWB) shows a significant decrease for the winter period, causing adverse effects for the main agricultural season. Further, moisture losses due to increasing evapotranspiration rates indicate problems for the annual water budget and groundwater recharge. The per capita blue water availability falls below a minimum threshold of 500 m(3) per year, denoting a high regional vulnerability to increasing water scarcity assuming a no-response scenario. Regional development focusing on the water-intense sectors of agriculture and tourism appears to be at risk. Institutional capacities and policies need to address the problem, and the prompt implementation of innovative water production and efficiency measures is recommended.
KW  - North Africa
KW  - Moulouya river basin
KW  - climate change
KW  - population growth
KW  - regional development
KW  - water availability
KW  - water management
KW  - water scarcity
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3390/w4040959
SN  - 2073-4441
VL  - 4
IS  - 4
SP  - 959
EP  - 982
PB  - MDPI
CY  - Basel
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lissner, Tabea Katharina
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Schewe, Jacob
A1  - Lakes, T.
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Climate impacts on human livelihoods: where uncertainty matters in projections of water availability
JF  - Earth system dynamics
N2  - Climate change will have adverse impacts on many different sectors of society, with manifold consequences for human livelihoods and well-being. However, a systematic method to quantify human well-being and livelihoods across sectors is so far unavailable, making it difficult to determine the extent of such impacts. Climate impact analyses are often limited to individual sectors (e.g. food or water) and employ sector-specific target measures, while systematic linkages to general livelihood conditions remain unexplored. Further, recent multi-model assessments have shown that uncertainties in projections of climate impacts deriving from climate and impact models, as well as greenhouse gas scenarios, are substantial, posing an additional challenge in linking climate impacts with livelihood conditions. This article first presents a methodology to consistently measure what is referred to here as AHEAD (Adequate Human livelihood conditions for wEll-being And Development). Based on a trans-disciplinary sample of concepts addressing human well-being and livelihoods, the approach measures the adequacy of conditions of 16 elements. We implement the method at global scale, using results from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) to show how changes in water availability affect the fulfilment of AHEAD at national resolution. In addition, AHEAD allows for the uncertainty of climate and impact model projections to be identified and differentiated. We show how the approach can help to put the substantial inter-model spread into the context of country-specific livelihood conditions by differentiating where the uncertainty about water scarcity is relevant with regard to livelihood conditions - and where it is not. The results indicate that livelihood conditions are compromised by water scarcity in 34 countries. However, more often, AHEAD fulfilment is limited through other elements. The analysis shows that the water-specific uncertainty ranges of the model output are outside relevant thresholds for AHEAD for 65 out of 111 countries, and therefore do not contribute to the overall uncertainty about climate change impacts on livelihoods. In 46 of the countries in the analysis, water-specific uncertainty is relevant to AHEAD. The AHEAD method presented here, together with first results, forms an important step towards making scientific results more applicable for policy decisions.
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-5-355-2014
SN  - 2190-4979
SN  - 2190-4987
VL  - 5
IS  - 2
SP  - 355
EP  - 373
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Landholm, David M.
A1  - Holsten, Anne
A1  - Martellozzo, Federico
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Climate change mitigation potential of community-based initiatives in Europe
JF  - Regional environmental change
N2  - There is a growing recognition that a transition to a sustainable low-carbon society is urgently needed. This transition takes place at multiple and complementary scales, including bottom-up approaches such as community-based initiatives (CBIs). However, empirical research on CBIs has focused until now on anecdotal evidence and little work has been done to quantitatively assess their impact in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this paper, we analyze 38 European initiatives across the food, energy, transport, and waste sectors to address the following questions: How can the GHG reduction potential of CBIs be quantified and analyzed in a systematic manner across different sectors? What is the GHG mitigation potential of CBIs and how does the reduction potential differ across domains? Through the comparison of the emission intensity arising from the goods and services the CBIs provide in relation to a business-as-usual scenario, we present the potential they have across different activities. This constitutes the foundational step to upscaling and further understanding their potential contribution to achieving climate change mitigation targets. Our findings indicate that energy generation through renewable sources, changes in personal transportation, and dietary change present by far the highest GHG mitigation activities analyzed, since they reduce the carbon footprint of CBI beneficiaries by 24%, 11%, and 7%, respectively. In contrast, the potential for some activities, such as locally grown organic food, is limited. The service provided by these initiatives only reduces the carbon footprint by 0.1%. Overall, although the proliferation of CBIs is very desirable from a climate change mitigation perspective it is necessary to stress that bottom-up initiatives present other important positive dimensions besides GHG mitigation. These initiatives also hold the potential of improving community resilience by strengthening local economies and enhancing social cohesion.
KW  - Greenhouse gas emissions
KW  - Sustainability transitions
KW  - Grassroots initiatives
KW  - Carbon footprint
KW  - Sustainable lifestyles
KW  - Low carbon economy
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1428-1
SN  - 1436-3798
SN  - 1436-378X
VL  - 19
IS  - 4
SP  - 927
EP  - 938
PB  - Springer
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gudipudi, Venkata Ramana
A1  - Fluschnik, Till
A1  - Ros, Anselmo Garcia Cantu
A1  - Walther, Carsten
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - City density and CO2 efficiency
JF  - Energy policy : the international journal of the political, economic, planning, environmental and social aspects of energy
N2  - Cities play a vital role in the global climate change mitigation agenda. City population density is one of the key factors that influence urban energy consumption and the subsequent GHG emissions. However, previous research on the relationship between population density and GHG emissions led to contradictory results due to urban/rural definition conundrum and the varying methodologies for estimating GHG emissions. This work addresses these ambiguities by employing the City Clustering Algorithm (CCA) and utilizing the gridded CO2 emissions data. Our results, derived from the analysis of all inhabited areas in the US, show a sub-linear relationship between population density and the total emissions (i.e. the sum of on-road and building emissions) on a per capita basis. Accordingly, we find that doubling the population density would entail a reduction in the total CO2 emissions in buildings and on-road sectors typically by at least 42%. Moreover, we find that population density exerts a higher influence on on-road emissions than buildings emissions. From an energy consumption point of view, our results suggest that on-going urban sprawl will lead to an increase in on-road energy consumption in cities and therefore stresses the importance of developing adequate local policy measures to limit urban sprawl. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KW  - Population density
KW  - City boundaries
KW  - Urban energy
KW  - Sectoral emissions
KW  - Urban sprawl
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.01.015
SN  - 0301-4215
SN  - 1873-6777
VL  - 91
SP  - 352
EP  - 361
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Reusser, Dominik Edwin
A1  - Winz, Anna-Lena
A1  - Fichtner, Christina
A1  - Sterzel, Till
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Cities as nuclei of sustainability?
JF  - Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
N2  - We have assembled CO2 emission figures from collections of urban GHG emission estimates published in peer-reviewed journals or reports from research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Analyzing the scaling with population size, we find that the exponent is development dependent with a transition from super- to sub-linear scaling. From the climate change mitigation point of view, the results suggest that urbanization is desirable in developed countries. Further, we compare this analysis with a second scaling relation, namely the fundamental allometry between city population and area, and propose that density might be a decisive quantity too. Last, we derive the theoretical country-wide urban emissions by integration and obtain a dependence on the size of the largest city.
KW  - Scaling
KW  - cities
KW  - climate change
KW  - development process
KW  - allometry
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0265813516638340
SN  - 2399-8083
SN  - 2399-8091
VL  - 44
IS  - 3
SP  - 425
EP  - 440
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Warchold, Anne
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Thapa, Pratibha
A1  - Putra, Muhammad Panji Islam Fajar
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Building a unified sustainable development goal database
BT  - why does sustainable development goal data selection matter?
JF  - Sustainable development
N2  - The 2020s are an essential decade for achieving the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this, SDG research needs to provide evidence that can be translated into concrete actions. However, studies use different SDG data, resulting in incomparable findings. Researchers primarily use SDG databases provided by the United Nations (UN), the World Bank Group (WBG), and the Bertelsmann Stiftung & Sustainable Development Solutions Network (BE-SDSN). We compile these databases into one unified SDG database and examine the effects of the data selection on our understanding of SDG interactions. Among the databases, we observed more different than similar SDG interactions. Differences in synergies and trade-offs mainly occur for SDGs that are environmentally oriented. Due to the increased data availability, the unified SDG database offers a more nuanced and reliable view of SDG interactions. Thus, the SDG data selection may lead to diverse findings, fostering actions that might neglect or exacerbate trade-offs.
KW  - inequalities
KW  - SDG indicator databases
KW  - SDG interactions
KW  - SDG networks;
KW  - SDGs
KW  - synergies and trade-offs
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2316
SN  - 0968-0802
SN  - 1099-1719
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gudipudi, Ramana Venkata
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Benchmarking urban eco-efficiency and urbanites' perception
JF  - Cities
N2  - Urbanization as an inexorable global trend stresses the need to identify cities which are eco-efficient. These cities enable socioeconomic development with lower environmental burden, both being multidimensional concepts. Based on this approach, we benchmark 88 European cities using (i) an advanced version of regression residual ranking and (ii) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Our results show that Stockholm, Munich and Oslo perform well irrespective of the benchmarking method. Furthermore, our results indicate that larger European cities are eco-efficient given the socioeconomic benefits they offer compared to smaller cities. In addition, we analyze correlations between a subjective public perception ranking and our objective eco-efficiency rankings for a subset of 45 cities. This exercise revealed three insights: (1) public perception about quality of life in a city is not merely confined to the socioeconomic well-being but rather to its combination with a lower environmental burden; (2) public perception correlates well with both formal ranking outcomes, corroborating the choice of variables; and (3) the advanced regression residual method appears to be more adequate to fit the urbanites' perception ranking (correlation coefficient about 0.6). This can be interpreted as an indication that urbanites' perception reflects the typical eco-efficiency performance and is less influenced by exceptionally performing cities (in the latter case, DEA should have better correlation coefficient). This study highlights that the socioeconomic growth in cities should not be environmentally detrimental as this might lead to significant discontent regarding perceived quality of urban life.
KW  - Eco-efficiency
KW  - City benchmarking
KW  - Sustainable urban development
KW  - Urban metabolism
KW  - Public perception
KW  - DEA
KW  - OLS ranking
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.11.009
SN  - 0264-2751
SN  - 1873-6084
VL  - 74
SP  - 109
EP  - 118
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zhou, Bin
A1  - Lauwaet, Dirk
A1  - Hooyberghs, Hans
A1  - De Ridder, Koen
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Rybski, Diego
T1  - Assessing Seasonality in the Surface Urban Heat Island of London
JF  - Journal of applied meteorology and climatology
N2  - This paper assesses the seasonality of the urban heat island (UHI) effect in the Greater London area (United Kingdom). Combining satellite-based observations and urban boundary layer climate modeling with the UrbClim model, the authors are able to address the seasonality of UHI intensity, on the basis of both land surface temperature (LST) and 2-m air temperature, for four individual times of the day (0130, 1030, 1330, and 2230 local time) and the daily means derived from them. An objective of this paper is to investigate whether the UHI intensities that are based on both quantities exhibit a similar hysteresis-like trajectory that is observed for LST when plotting the UHI intensity against the background temperature. The results show that the UrbClim model can satisfactorily reproduce both the observed urban rural LSTs and 2-m air temperatures as well as their differences and the hysteresis in the surface UHI. The hysteresis-like seasonality is largely absent in both the observed and modeled 2-m air temperatures, however. A sensitivity simulation of the UHI intensity to incoming solar radiation suggests that the hysteresis of the LST can mainly be attributed to the seasonal variation in incoming solar radiation.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0041.1
SN  - 1558-8424
SN  - 1558-8432
VL  - 55
SP  - 493
EP  - 505
PB  - American Meteorological Soc.
CY  - Boston
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prahl, Boris F.
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
A1  - Burghoff, Olaf
A1  - Held, Hermann
T1  - Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms
JF  - Geophysical research letters
N2  - Analyzing insurance-loss data we derive stochastic storm-damage functions for residential buildings. On district level we fit power-law relations between daily loss and maximum wind speed, typically spanning more than 4 orders of magnitude. The estimated exponents for 439 German districts roughly range from 8 to 12. In addition, we find correlations among the parameters and socio-demographic data, which we employ in a simplified parametrization of the damage function with just 3 independent parameters for each district. A Monte Carlo method is used to generate loss estimates and confidence bounds of daily and annual storm damages in Germany. Our approach reproduces the annual progression of winter storm losses and enables to estimate daily losses over a wide range of magnitudes. Citation: Prahl, B. F., D. Rybski, J. P. Kropp, O. Burghoff, and H. Held (2012), Applying stochastic small-scale damage functions to German winter storms, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L06806, doi: 10.1029/2012GL050961.
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL050961
SN  - 0094-8276
VL  - 39
IS  - 12
PB  - American Geophysical Union
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Weng, Wei
A1  - Lüdeke, Matthias K. B.
A1  - Zemp, Delphine Clara
A1  - Lakes, Tobia
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - Aerial and surface rivers
BT  - downwind impacts on water availability from land use changes in Amazonia
JF  - Hydrology and earth system sciences : HESS
N2  - The abundant evapotranspiration provided by the Amazon forests is an important component of the hydrological cycle, both regionally and globally. Since the last century, deforestation and expanding agricultural activities have been changing the ecosystem and its provision of moisture to the atmosphere. However, it remains uncertain how the ongoing land use change will influence rainfall, runoff, and water availability as findings from previous studies differ. Using moisture tracking experiments based on observational data, we provide a spatially detailed analysis recognizing potential teleconnection between source and sink regions of atmospheric moisture. We apply land use scenarios in upwind moisture sources and quantify the corresponding rainfall and runoff changes in downwind moisture sinks. We find spatially varying responses of water regimes to land use changes, which may explain the diverse results from previous studies. Parts of the Peruvian Amazon and western Bolivia are identified as the sink areas most sensitive to land use change in the Amazon and we highlight the current water stress by Amazonian land use change on these areas in terms of the water availability. Furthermore, we also identify the influential source areas where land use change may considerably reduce a given target sink's water reception (from our example of the Ucayali River basin outlet, rainfall by 5–12 % and runoff by 19–50 % according to scenarios). Sensitive sinks and influential sources are therefore suggested as hotspots for achieving sustainable land–water management.
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-911-2018
SN  - 1027-5606
SN  - 1607-7938
VL  - 22
IS  - 1
SP  - 911
EP  - 927
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Costa, Luís Fílípe Carvalho da
A1  - Rybski, Diego
A1  - Lucht, Wolfgang
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - A Systematic Study of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Interactions
JF  - Earths Future
N2  - Sustainable development goals (SDGs) have set the 2030 agenda to transform our world by tackling multiple challenges humankind is facing to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. In contrast to conventional development agendas focusing on a restricted set of dimensions, the SDGs provide a holistic and multidimensional view on development. Hence, interactions among the SDGs may cause diverging results. To analyze the SDG interactions we systematize the identification of synergies and trade-offs using official SDG indicator data for 227 countries. A significant positive correlation between a pair of SDG indicators is classified as a synergy while a significant negative correlation is classified as a trade-off. We rank synergies and trade-offs between SDGs pairs on global and country scales in order to identify the most frequent SDG interactions. For a given SDG, positive correlations between indicator pairs were found to outweigh the negative ones in most countries. Among SDGs the positive and negative correlations between indicator pairs allowed for the identification of particular global patterns. SDG 1 (No poverty) has synergetic relationship with most of the other goals, whereas SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production) is the goal most commonly associated with trade-offs. The attainment of the SDG agenda will greatly depend on whether the identified synergies among the goals can be leveraged. In addition, the highlighted trade-offs, which constitute obstacles in achieving the SDGs, need to be negotiated and made structurally nonobstructive by deeper changes in the current strategies.
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000632
SN  - 2328-4277
VL  - 5
SP  - 1169
EP  - 1179
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Putra, Muhammad Panji Islam Fajar
A1  - Pradhan, Prajal
A1  - Kropp, Jürgen
T1  - A systematic analysis of Water-Energy-Food security nexus
BT  - a South Asian case study
JF  - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man
N2  - Most South Asian countries have challenges in ensuring water, energy, and food (WEF) security, which are often interacting positively or negatively. To address these challenges, the nexus approach provides a framework to identify the interactions of the WEF sectors as an integrated system. However, most nexus studies only qualitatively discuss the interactions between these sectors. This study conducts a systematic analysis of the WEF security nexus in South Asia by using open data sources at the country scale. We analyze interactions between the WEF sectors statistically, defining positive and negative correlations between the WEF security indicators as synergies and trade-offs, respectively. By creating networks of the synergies and trade-offs, we further identify most positively and negatively influencing indicators in the WEF security nexus. We observe a larger share of trade-offs than synergies within the water and energy sectors and a larger share of synergies than trade-offs among the WEF sectors for South Asia. However, these observations vary across the South Asian countries. Our analysis highlights that strategies on promoting sustainable energy and discouraging fossil fuel use could have overall positive effects on the WEF security nexus in the countries. This study provides evidence for considering the WEF security nexus as an integrated system rather than just a combination of three different sectors or securities.
KW  - water security
KW  - food security
KW  - energy security
KW  - network analysis
KW  - water-energy-food nexus
KW  - sustainable development
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138451
SN  - 0048-9697
SN  - 1879-1026
VL  - 728
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -