Reducing elderly vulnerability to climate change risks using an integrated infrastructure recovery planning

As urban areas face increasing climate risks, enhancing urban resilience has become a crucial priority, especially in densely populated and rapidly ageing cities such as Singapore. This study proposes an integrated recovery planning workflow to reduce elderly vulnerability under compound extreme heat and flash flooding events intensified by climate change. This workflow considers three important criteria: outdoor thermal comfort, assessed using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI); the spatial vulnerability of the elderly population; and electricity disruption risk related to flood-exposed urban power infrastructure. UTCI was computed with the Urban Tethys-Chloris (UT&C) model, a computationally efficient urban ecohydrological model validated for tropical urban environments. Elderly vulnerability was assessed by combining demographic data, the spatial distribution of residents, and urban heat patterns, highlighting the connection between social vulnerability and heat exposure. Flood-prone power nodes were identified using high-resolution terrain data and national flood reports to enable modelling of compound urban heat and flooding hazards. The workflow was applied to Queenstown, Singapore, where multiple recovery strategies were simulated, and the resulting spatio-temporal patterns of elderly exposure and recovery priorities were analysed. The results show how prioritising the restoration of flood-affected power nodes serving heat-exposed elderly populations can substantially reduce heat-related vulnerability during compound events. Explicitly linking biophysical, socio-demographic, and infrastructure criteria within a single workflow provides a practical decision-support tool for climate-resilient recovery planning in ageing, high-density cities. • This study presents an integrated workflow for infrastructure recovery planning. • This workflow considers biophysical, socio-demographic, and technical criteria. • The workflow aims to reduce elderly vulnerability to climate-change hazards.