Assessing vulnerability: an integrated approach for mapping adaptive capacity, sensitivity, and exposure

TLDR

Understanding the factors that make coastal communities vulnerable to climate and coastal hazards is essential for effective decision‑making and resource allocation. The study aims to use GIS‑based spatial analysis to map socioeconomic vulnerability in Grenada. The authors build an integrated vulnerability index by combining spatial variables of social sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and flooding exposure, selected from climate adaptation, disaster management, and poverty development literature. Mapping reveals that flooding vulnerability in Grenada is uneven and region‑specific, indicating the need for tailored strategies and showing that the approach can guide national adaptation, disaster management, and poverty development efforts to better allocate resources.

Abstract

Making decisions and efficiently allocating resources to reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities requires, among other things, an understanding of the factors that make a society vulnerable to climate and coastal hazards. One way of doing this is through the analysis of spatial data. We demonstrate how to apply GIS methods to spatially represent socioeconomic vulnerability in Grenada, a tropical small island developing state (SIDS) in the Eastern Caribbean. Our model combines spatial features representing variables of social sensitivity, community adaptive capacity, and community exposure to flooding in an integrated vulnerability index. We draw from the fields of climate change adaptation, disaster management, and poverty and development to select our variables enabling unique, cross sector, applications of our assessment. Mapping our results illustrates that vulnerability to flooding is not evenly distributed across the country and is not driven by the same factors in all areas of Grenada. This indicates a need for the implementation of different strategies in communities across Grenada to help effectively reduce vulnerability to climate and coastal hazards. The approach presented in this paper can be used to address national issues on climate change adaptation, disaster management, and poverty and development and more effectively utilize funds in order to reduce community vulnerability to natural hazards today and in the future.