Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Environment Systems and Decisions (2019) 39:77–94 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-018-9684-7 A framework for pluvial food risk assessment in Alexandria considering the coping capacity Bahaa Elboshy 1  · Shinjiro Kanae 2  · Mona Gamaleldin 1  · Hany Ayad 3  · Toshihiro Osaragi 4  · Waleed Elbarki 5 Published online: 4 April 2018 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Urbanization and climate change are likely to aggravate the food risk especially in the developing regions where these are also lack of resources. Risk assessment at the local scale can be seen as an important tool to assist the decision makers to identify and prioritize development, preparedness, and emergency. This paper introduces an integrated framework to assess urban pluvial food risk, taking into consideration the available coping capacity arrangements as the coping capacity is con- sidered to be the main factor to control the risk impact. The presented framework incorporates the pluvial food inundation model; the building and social vulnerabilities indices; and coping capacity indicators to identify the risk level in the urban areas and to test the diferent scenarios for the disaster risk reduction measures. The proposed risk assessment framework has been applied to the city of Alexandria, located in northern Egypt, as there is an increase in pluvial foods in the city causing economic and human losses. A risk map for Almontaza district has been prepared to reveal the risk level for each block, this map can be used for the planning purposes. The introduced framework can increase the efciency of the preparedness and emergency plans; it can also help the planners to direct the available development resources to the priority areas. Keywords Urban food · Risk assessment · Extreme events · Risk modeling · Coping capacity 1 Introduction Throughout the last decades, disaster risks have increased in several countries, while the climate change leads to increase the frequency and intensity of natural hazards (Ahmed 2013). Heavy rainfalls, heat waves, and intense storms surges became more frequent and are likely to increase in the future (Revi et al. 2014). Also, rapid urbanization pushes us out of our comfort zone, which, in turn, means that the expo- sure to diferent hazards and human vulnerabilities to natural hazards witness a remarkable growth (UNESCO 2010). Therefore, disaster risk studies, particularly in the area of disaster risk assessment, came to the forefront. Such studies present an understanding of the risk in terms of aggrava- tion factors, and the expected consequences to support the disaster risk management activities (GFDRR 2016). Also, risk analysis based on probabilistic quantitative methods has been widely used and has been useful for dealing with pre- dictable disaster situations (Linkov et al. 2014). * Bahaa Elboshy bahaa.elboshy@ejust.edu.eg Shinjiro Kanae kanae@cv.titech.ac.jp Mona Gamaleldin mona.gamal@ejust.edu.eg Hany Ayad hany.m.ayad@gmail.com Toshihiro Osaragi osaragi.t.aa@m.titech.ac.jp Waleed Elbarki welbarki76@gmail.com 1 Environmental Engineering Department, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt 2 Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan 3 Faculty of Engineering, Architectural Department, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt 4 Department of Architecture and Building Engineering, School of Environment and Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan 5 Civil Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt