A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

Abstract

Worldwide, there is a need to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and to develop methodologies and tools to assess vulnerability. One of the most important goals of assessing coastal flood vulnerability, in particular, is to create a readily understandable link between the theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day decision-making process and to encapsulate this link in an easily accessible tool. This article focuses on developing a Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Index (CCFVI) based on exposure, susceptibility and resilience to coastal flooding. It is applied to nine cities around the world, each with different kinds of exposure. With the aid of this index, it is demonstrated which cities are most vulnerable to coastal flooding with regard to the system's components, that is, hydro-geological, socio-economic and politico-administrative. The index gives a number from 0 to 1, indicating comparatively low or high coastal flood vulnerability, which shows which cities are most in need of further, more detailed investigation for decision-makers. Once its use to compare the vulnerability of a range of cities under current conditions has been demonstrated, it is used to study the impact of climate change on the vulnerability of these cities over a longer timescale. The results show that CCFVI provides a means of obtaining a broad overview of flood vulnerability and the effect of possible adaptation options. This, in turn, will allow for the direction of resources to more in-depth investigation of the most promising strategies.

Coastal infrastructure vulnerability: an integrated assessment model

“…The index comprises several indicators, which are interlinked with the specific formula. In recent decades, some researchers have established several vulnerability indicators within the socio-economic and ecological system context (King and MacGregor 2000;Brooks et al 2005;Barnett et al 2008;Torresan et al 2008;Abson et al 2012;Balica et al 2012). …”

“…A definite procedure is then required to categorise the vulnerability of the coastal infrastructure; accordingly, a novel integrated model has been developed for the evaluation of coastal infrastructure vulnerability of the Aberystwyth coast, i.e., CIVI. Two coastal vulnerability index (CVI) approaches were adopted for this study, based on an adaptation of the work of Balica et al (2012) and Palmer et al (2011). Accordingly, an integrated model (Fig.…”

“…3) was established to evaluate the vulnerability of the Aberystwyth coast by amalgamating indicator and index-based methods. The fiscal parameters were selected using the indicator-based method of Balica et al (2012), and the concept of development of CIVI was taken from the index-based approach of Palmer et al (2011). The fiscal values threshold for parameters was inspired by Aberystwyth fiscal consequences.…”

Flood Risk Assessment on Selected Critical Infrastructure in Kota Marudu Town, Sabah, Malaysia

“…The cities were compared in terms of their exposure, resistance and adaptive capacity to flooding. Balica et al [8] has carried out a study in establishing a flood vulnerability index of 9 different coastal cities around the world, which took into account the hydro-geological, social, economic and politico-administrative components.…”

Mapping the Socio-Economic and Ecological Resilience of Japanese Coral Reefscapes across a Decade

“…We used historical databases, spaceborne data and census data to create spatial layers that represent endogenous, exogenous oceano-climatic and elevation factors ( Table 1). ) constitute two endogenous socio-economic factors [35]. The Nansei population layer was derived from the 2.…”