2026 Essays

Accounting for Compounding Climate Events in Emergency Management

Tedesco, Marco; Sathuluri, David

This authors examines the growing challenge of compound climate events for emergency management, arguing that conventional single-hazard warning and response systems systematically underestimate risk. Using the concurrence of extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and flooding in New York City as an illustrative case, it shows how interacting hazards can generate health, infrastructure, and social impacts greater than the sum of their individual effects. Heat intensifies cardiovascular strain, wildfire-derived fine particulate matter aggravates respiratory and cardiac conditions, and floodwaters introduce further safety and health risks; meanwhile, reliance on air conditioning during heat and smoke events can heighten stress on already fragile electricity systems. The article emphasizes that compound risks are also socially uneven, disproportionately affecting neighborhoods with limited tree canopy, aging housing and drainage infrastructure, inadequate cooling, and elevated baseline health vulnerabilities. Although compound-event science has advanced substantially, its operational integration into public-warning systems, resource allocation, and emergency planning remains limited. The article calls for multi-hazard indices linked to social-vulnerability data and decision-support tools that enable emergency managers to anticipate, communicate, and mitigate compounding climate risks.