Increasing coastal flooding threatens urban centers worldwide. Projections of physical damages to structures and their contents can characterize the monetary scale of risk, but they lack relevant socioeconomic context. The impact of coastal flooding on communities hinges not only on the cost, but on the ability of households to pay for the damages. Here, we repurpose probabilistic risk assessment to analyze the monetary and social risk associated with coastal flooding in the San Francisco Bay Area for 2020–2060. We show that future coastal flooding could financially ruin a substantial number of households by burdening them with flood damage costs that exceed discretionary household income. We quantify these impacts at the census block group scale by computing the percentage of households without discretionary income, before and after coastal flooding costs. We find that for several coastal communities in San Mateo County more than 50% of households will be facing financial instability, highlighting the need for immediate policy interventions that target existing, socially produced risk rather than waiting for potentially elusive certainty in sea level rise projections. We emphasize that the percentage of financially unstable households is particularly high in racially diverse and historically disadvantaged communities, highlighting the connection between financial instability and inequity. While our estimates are specific to the San Francisco Bay Area, our granular, household-level perspective is transferable to other urban centers and can help identify the specific challenges that different communities face and inform appropriate adaptation interventions.

中文翻译：

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海平面上升，不平等加剧？旧金山湾区的风险社区及其对适应政策的影响

不断增加的沿海洪水威胁着世界各地的城市中心。对结构及其内容的物理损坏的预测可以表征风险的货币规模，但它们缺乏相关的社会经济背景。沿海洪水对社区的影响不仅取决于成本，还取决于家庭支付损失的能力。在这里，我们重新利用概率风险评估来分析与 2020-2060 年旧金山湾区沿海洪水相关的货币和社会风险。我们表明，未来的沿海洪水可能会给大量家庭带来超过可自由支配的家庭收入的洪灾损失，从而在经济上毁掉他们。我们通过计算没有可支配收入的家庭的百分比来量化人口普查区块组规模的这些影响，沿海洪水之前和之后的成本。我们发现，对于圣马刁县的几个沿海社区，超过 50% 的家庭将面临财务不稳定，这突出表明需要立即针对现有的、社会产生的风险进行政策干预，而不是等待海平面上升预测中可能难以捉摸的确定性。我们强调，在种族多元化和历史上处于不利地位的社区中，财务不稳定家庭的比例特别高，这突出了财务不稳定与不平等之间的联系。虽然我们的估计是针对旧金山湾区的，但我们细粒度的、家庭层面的观点可以转移到其他城市中心，并可以帮助确定不同社区面临的具体挑战并为适当的适应干预措施提供信息。