Meso and micro perspective on climate change impacts, the case of Cattinara hospital Italy

Experiences with climate change-induced events incentivise research on prevention and management of the effects. Risk assessment is an important tool to envisage risks related to climate change and the socio-economic impacts. Therefore, insight into socio-economic impacts is crucial. In this paper a meso and micro perspective will be used to analyse the socio-economic impacts of climate change in the case of Cattinara hospital in Trieste, Italy. The meso perspective encompasses the findings of the development of a spatial microsimulation model aimed at estimating geographical distributions of relevant socio-economic indicators for regions affected by climate induced events. It also includes the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to map the outputs as well as econometric analysis of the model outputs. The simulation outputs (i.e. the attributes of the synthetic individuals) can include a wide range of policy relevant variables such as earned income, employment status and sector, age, well-being measures and perceptions on various aspects of individuals’ lifes among others. The findings show that a fully operational hospital is positively and significantly linked to the happiness levels of municipalities. However, partially operational hospitals do not exhibit a statistically significant relationship with happiness when we control for municipalities’ socio economic characteristics.

The micro perspective comprises the findings of a survey distributed among technicians, practitioners of the Cattinara hospital and representatives of civil society organisations of the municipality of Trieste and others. The findings demonstrate that hospitalized people are most vulnerable and exposed to the health impacts that may be created by likely climate change-induced damage to the Cattinara hospital, followed by hospital personnel. Damage to the hospital building is the most relevant economic impact that might be created by climate change extreme events, followed by the impacts on the whole hospital’s supply chain. The impacts on the logistics associated with public services provision in relation to the likely need for transferring patients to other healthcare facilities and/or to the temporary hospital’s closure are the most relevant.

While the meso perspective on climate change impact indicates that a partically functioning hospital is important assuming that access to health care will be continued, the micro perspective on climate change impact points out that the hospital’s building and supply chain have to be taken into account as well in risk assessment of climate change-induced events.