Jim Hall

University of Oxford | OX · Environmental Change Institute

Global trade relies on a small number of strategic passageways, so-called maritime chokepoints, which are vulnerable to disruptions. Yet, the exposure of countries to these disruptions is not known, inhibiting adequate preparedness. Here, we quantify the systemic impacts of maritime chokepoint disruptions subject to a variety of hazards, including...

There is growing recognition of the need for long-duration energy storage to cope with low frequency (i.e. seasonal to multi-annual) variability in renewable energy supplies. Recent analysis for the UK has estimated that 60–100 TWh of hydrogen storage could be required to provide zero-carbon backup for renewable energy supplies in 2050. However, th...

We evaluate the implications for Ethiopia and Egypt of two dams that could be built upstream of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), in combination with hypothetical Ethiopian irrigation schemes upstream of these Blue Nile hydropower facilities. Two new dams could increase average annual hydropower on the Blue Nile River from Lake Tana to Kh...

The extent to which import-reliant countries may be vulnerable to co-occurring – and geographically distal – climate disruptions in crop production remains poorly understood. By analysing weather variability and covariation in staple food crop production across 181 countries, we identify the countries most exposed to simultaneous crop failures acro...

Many drinking water utilities face immense challenges in supplying sustainable, drought-resilient services to households. Here we propose a quantified framework to perform drought risk analysis on ~5600 potable water supply utilities and evaluate the benefit of adaptation actions. We identify global hotspots of present-day and mid-century drought r...

To analyse the risks from Tropical Cyclones (TC) to electricity supply, we have combined a large ensemble of TC simulations with a spatial model of power networks and people served, for the entire TC belt globally. The model of electricity power failure, measured in terms of population disrupted, was calibrated against nighttime lights satellite im...

Actions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions can contribute to a country’s wider development targets, a concept emphasised in the most recent IPCC report on mitigation. Almost every country globally has defined their Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, which provide a formalised mechanism to communicate these commitments. Driven by the ur...

Infrastructure systems are particularly vulnerable to climate hazards, such as flooding, wildfires, cyclones and temperature fluctuations. Responding to these threats in a proportionate and targeted way requires quantitative analysis of climate risks, which underpins infrastructure resilience and adaptation strategies. The aim of this paper is to r...

Climate hazards pose increasing threats to development outcomes across the world’s coastal regions by impacting infrastructure service delivery. Using a high-resolution dataset of 8.2 million households in Bangladesh’s coastal zone, we assess the extent to which infrastructure service disruptions induced by flood, cyclone and erosion hazards can th...

Recent climatic events and conflict have heightened concern about the vulnerability of the global food system to systemic shocks. Yet it remains unclear what shocks are most pressing for a country’s food supply, and whether trade can mediate or amplify negative impacts. Here, using a newly developed global bilateral trade model for 177 countries an...

Climate-related disruptions to water supply infrastructure services incur direct financial losses to utilities (e.g. to repair damaged assets) and externalise a societal cost to domestic customers due to additional costs that they may incur (e.g. to acquire water from alternative sources). The latter often represents an uncompensated social burden,...

Green ammonia has been proposed as a technologically viable solution to decarbonise global shipping, yet there are conflicting ambitions for where global production, transport and fuelling infrastructure will be located. Here, we develop a spatial modelling framework to quantify the cost-optimal fuel supply to decarbonise shipping in 2050 using gre...

Climate hazards can cause major disasters when they occur simultaneously as compound hazards. To understand the distribution of climate risk and inform adaptation policies, scientists need to simulate a large number of physically realistic and spatially coherent events. Current methods are limited by computational constraints and the probabilistic...

Despite the importance of international trade for food security, high production costs and trade frictions are still prevalent, contributing to regional heterogeneities in the landed cost of food commodities. Here, we quantify the landed cost for six grain commodities across 3,500 subnational regions. We find large heterogeneities in the costs of i...

Climate hazards pose increased threats to development outcomes across the world’s coastal regions by impacting infrastructure service delivery. Using a high-resolution dataset of 8.2 million households in Bangladesh's coastal zone, we assess the extent to which infrastructure service disruptions, induced by flood, cyclone, and erosion hazards, can...

Disruptions to ports from climate extremes can have systemic impacts on global shipping, trade and supply chains. By combining estimated climatic-related port downtime at 1,320 ports with a global model of transport flows, we pinpoint systemic risks to global maritime transport, trade and supply-chain networks. We estimate a total of US$81 billion...

We evaluate the implications of constructing one or two large dams upstream of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), possibly in combination with new irrigation schemes upstream of these Blue Nile hydropower facilities. Two new dams could increase average annual hydropower on the Blue and Main Nile by almost 50% (30.2 TWh/yr to 44.7 TWh/yr)....

Energy system models allow the development and assessment of ambitious transition pathways towards a sustainable energy system. However, current models lack adequate spatial and temporal resolution to capture the implications of a shift to decentralised energy supply and storage across multiple local energy vectors to meet spatially variable energy...

Disruptions to ports from climate extremes can have systemic impacts on global shipping, trade and supply chains. By combining analysis of climatic risks at 1320 ports worldwide with a global model of transport flows, we pinpoint systemic risks to maritime transport, trade and global supply-chain networks as a result of port downtime. We estimate a...

Anthropogenic loading of nitrogen to river systems can pose serious health hazards and create critical environmental threats. Quantification of the magnitude and impact of freshwater nitrogen requires identifying key controls of nitrogen dynamics and analyzing both the past and present patterns of nitrogen flows. To tackle this challenge, we adopte...

Despite their economic importance, the risk that ports face from multiple natural hazards has not yet been monetised on a global scale. Here, we perform an asset-level risk analysis of global port infrastructure from multiple hazards, quantifying the risk to physical asset damages and logistics services (i.e. port-specific risk) and maritime trade...

Water utilities' supply systems are vulnerable to several climate‐related hazards, including droughts, floods and cyclones. Here we propose a generally applicable framework for conducting multi‐hazard risk assessments of water supply systems and use it to quantify the impact of present and future climate extremes on the national water supply networ...

The impacts of natural disasters are often disproportionally borne by poor or otherwise marginalized groups. However, while disaster risk modelling studies have made progress in quantifying the exposure of populations, limited advances have been made in determining the socioeconomic characteristics of these exposed populations. Here, we generate sy...

Severe droughts can result in shortages of water supplies, with widespread social and economic consequences. Here we use a coupled simulation model to assess the reliability of public water supplies in England, in the context of changing scenarios of water demand, water regulation and climate change. The coupled simulation model combines climate si...

Rail networks entail multiple interdependencies which can initiate or propagate network failures with serious consequences for the movement of trains and passengers. In this study, we present a rail infrastructure system-of-systems model which can be used to simulate disruptions to the network's operations and propose a performance metric based on...

Ports are embedded in different networks, including the local critical infrastructure network, the regional hinterland transport network and the global maritime transport network. These networks are exposed to a variety of natural hazards, which cause disruptions that can propagate to other network components, resulting in wider supply chain losses...

Scaling up national climate adaptation under the Paris Agreement is critical not only to reduce risk, but also to contribute to a nation’s development. Traditional adaptation assessments are aimed at evaluating adaptation to cost-effectively reduce risk and do not capture the far-reaching benefits of adaptation in the context of development and the...

In their recent paper in ERL, ‘Egypt’s water budget deficit and suggested mitigation policies for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) filling scenarios,’ Heggy et al (2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 074022) paint an alarming picture of the water deficits and economic impacts for Egypt that will occur as a consequence of the filling of the GERD....

We quantify the criticality of the world’s 1300 most important ports for global supply chains by predicting the allocation of trade flows on the global maritime transport network, which we link to a global supply-chain database to evaluate the importance of ports for the economy. We find that 50% of global trade in value terms is maritime, with low...

The international community has committed to achieve 169 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets by 2030 and to enhance climate adaptation under the Paris Agreement. Despite the potential for synergies, aligning SDG and climate adaptation efforts is inhibited by an inadequate understanding of the complex relationship between SDG targets and adap...

Livestock are known to be one of the leading sources of nitrogen and other organic pollutant contents in surface waters. In response to growing demand for animal-source foods, livestock production has shifted into more high-input systems, accompanied by increased fertilizer and animal manure application rates to produce feed, which has resulted in...

Irrigation agriculture is the most important user of the global freshwater resources worldwide, which makes it one of the key actors conditioning sustainable development and water security. The anticipated future climate change, population growth, and rapidly rising global demand for food will likely lead to agricultural expansion by allowing the d...

Natural hazards can impair socio-economic development and disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable. While global and regional studies have quantified population exposure to various natural hazards, they have so far ignored exposure to geomorphic hazards, such as coastal and riverine erosion, land subsidence and siltation of waterbo...

On behalf of the editorial board of Water Resources Research (WRR) and the entire water science community, we want to express our most heartfelt gratitude to all who reviewed manuscripts for the journal in 2021. Your great efforts have ensured and improved the high quality and impact of the WRR papers and generally of research in our field. In 2021...

Increasing flood risk, salinization and waterlogging threaten the lives and livelihoods of more than 35 million people in Bangladesh’s coastal zone. While planning models have long been used to inform investments in water infrastructure, they frequently overlook interacting risks, impacts on the poor and local context. We address this gap by develo...

The UN Broadband Commission has committed to universal broadband by 2030. But can this objective really be affordably delivered? The aim of this paper is to assess universal broadband viability in the developing world, quantifying the relationship between demand-side revenue and supply-side cost. A comprehensive scenario-based simulation model is d...

Despite their economic importance, the risk that ports face from multiple natural hazards has not yet been monetised on a global scale. Here, we perform an asset-level risk analysis of global port infrastructure from multiple hazards, quantifying the risk to physical asset damages and logistics services (i.e. port-specific risk) and risk to maritim...

Decarbonisation of heating and road transport are regarded as necessary but very challenging steps on the pathway to net zero carbon emissions. Assessing the most efficient routes to decarbonise these sectors requires an integrated view of energy and road transport systems. Here we describe how a national gas and electricity transmission network mo...

Due to its substantial role on the Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and human health, nitrogen is recognized as one of the major water quality indicators of Sustainable Development Goal 6.3.2. Quantifying these potential impacts in large spatial scales still appears to be a grand challenge because of the high computational demand required by the distr...

Acute climate-change hazards, such as floods or storm surges, can affect a nation’s built and natural environment assets that are critical for development and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To reduce the impacts of such acute climate-change hazards and safeguard development, national decision-makers require evidence on whe...

Urban water utilities are increasing their use of energy-intensive technologies such as desalination and long-distanced pumped transfers. Under pressure to reduce their energy-related carbon emissions to zero, water utilities have devised a variety of energy management strategies, including the purchase of renewable energy and self-generation of el...

More than 70% of large deltas are under threat from rising sea levels, subsidence and anthropogenic interferences, including the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) delta, the Earth’s largest and most populous delta system. The dynamic geomorphology of this delta is often overlooked in assessments of its vulnerability; consequently, development plans a...

Despite the importance of information and communications technology (ICT), previous studies of the business value of information technology have yielded mixed results. This study provides new empirical evidence that demonstrates the impact of cities' ICT on firm performance. A series of panel datasets are assembled to measure the improvement of cit...

Drought and water scarcity pose a risk to the economy, particularly sectors where water is a crucial input to the production process. This paper describes integrated simulations of water shortages from a dynamic national water resource systems model with a static economic input-output (I-O) model to assess total drought risk to the economy. To quan...

Water security is a multi-dimensional concept that varies across spatial scales. However, evaluations tend to focus on a single scale, which can suppress spatial heterogeneity and may not be relevant to the scale of decision making. We have identified four considerations encountered when selecting a scale in water security analyses: (1) the natural...

The implementation of large-scale containment measures by governments to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus has resulted in large impacts to the global economy. Here, we derive a new high-frequency indicator of economic activity using empirical vessel tracking data, and use it to estimate the global maritime trade losses during the first eigh...

Models that have been developed for analysis of the impacts of failure in railway networks have tended to make simplifying assumptions about train paths and delays and have not always accounted for the existence of multiple tracks on a route. In a step towards a more realistic, yet computationally tractable analysis of the disruption of rail servic...

Key Points The editors thank the 2020 peer reviewers

Abstract Small island developing states face particular challenges to ensure their infrastructure promotes social, economic, and environmental well‐being. Closing the achievement gap for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) involves prioritization and coordination across multiple sectors. With an application to the country of Saint Lucia, this...

The international community has committed to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and to enhance climate action under the Paris Agreement. Yet achievement of the SDGs is already threatened by climate-change impacts. Here we show that further adaptation this decade is urgently required to safeguard 68% of SDG targets against acute...

In recognition of the transformative opportunities that broadband connectivity presents, the United Nations Broadband Commission has committed the international community to accelerate universal access across the developing world. However, the cost of meeting this objective, and the feasibility of doing so on a commercially viable basis, are not we...

Ports form the backbone of the global economy. By combining a vast database of ship tracking data with bilateral trade data and input-output tables, we highlight the critical role of specific ports in global supply chains and economies. For some countries, we find that 43.5% of economic activity is dependent on trade going through a single port. Th...

Quantified flood risk assessments focus on asset losses, neglecting longer-term impacts to household welfare via income and consumption losses. The extent of welfare losses depends upon resilience – the ability to anticipate, resist, cope, recover and learn from a shock. Here, we use a novel welfare loss modelling framework and perform a high-resol...

Concerns have been raised about rising trends in surface water dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in UK upland catchments over the past decades. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain these trends, including changes in climate and declines in sulfate deposition across Europe. Drier summers and wetter winters are projected in th...

The implementation of large-scale containment measures by governments to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus has resulted in a large supply and demand shock throughout the global economy. Here, we use empirical vessel tracking data and a newly developed algorithm to estimate the global maritime trade losses during the first eight months of the...

A large part of operating costs in urban water supply networks is usually due to energy use, mostly in the form of electricity consumption. There is growing pressure to reduce energy use to help save operational costs and reduce carbon emissions. However, in practice, reducing these costs has proved to be challenging because of the complexity of th...

When construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is completed, the Nile will have two of the world’s largest dams—the High Aswan Dam (HAD) and the GERD—in two different countries (Egypt and Ethiopia). There is not yet agreement on how these dams will operate to manage scarce water resources. We elucidate the potential risks and oppor...