Figure 4

Spatial patterns of the vulnerability index in urban areas of eight capital cities: (1) Darwin (the capital city of Northern Territory); (2) Brisbane (the capital city of Queensland) ; (3) Sydney (the capital city of New South Wales); (4) Canberra (Australian Capital Territory (ACT)) ; (5) Melbourne (the capital city of Victoria); (6) Adelaide (the capital city of South Australia); (7) Perth (the capital city of West Australia); (8) Hobart (the capital city of Tasmania). The spatial patterns of the vulnerability index in each theme are displayed in Supplementary Figs. S2–S6. The identification of the most vulnerable urban areas (> 2.5 standard deviation) in different themes are presented in Supplementary Table S7. More specifically, for Theme 2 (Supplementary Fig. S3), the most vulnerable areas in terms of demographic composition and disability have less obvious patterns that can be generalised but more spread out sporadically across entire urban space outside of inner cities in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, and ACT. For Theme 3 (Supplementary Fig. S4), the most vulnerable areas in terms of minority status and languages appear in Sydney (e.g., Liverpool and Blacktown), Melbourne (e.g., Springvale); in the south and southwest of Brisbane (e.g., Sunnybank, Sunnybank Hills); in Adelaide (e.g., Parafield), Perth (e.g., Jandakot) and Darwin (e.g., Humpty Doo). For Theme 4 (Supplementary Fig. S5), the most vulnerable areas in terms of housing types and transportation appear do not have specific patterns to generalise, but more sporadically appear in a few suburbs in each capital city (detailed in Supplementary Note 3). For Theme 5 (Supplementary Fig. S6), the most vulnerable areas in terms of built environment in capital cities share some common patterns—largely appearing in peri-urban locales, far away from inner cities.