Hurricane Harvey pummeled Houston and New Orleans last week, and Hurricane Irma hit Miami and other cities near the US southern coast this weekend. Meanwhile, officials in cities across the American West have been trying to tame massive wildfires in recent weeks.
And then there are the everyday disasters that plague many American cities, like poverty, unsanitary water, substandard education, and inequality.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a cluster of research center and universities, analyzed which places may be better off than others in the face of a range of disasters. The SDSN’s recently-published 2017 US Cities Sustainable Development Goals Index pinpoints the US metro regions least vulnerable to everyday issues as well as climate risks, like sea level rise, mega-storms, and heat waves.