A TODIM-based approach for the assessment of social vulnerability in Jiangsu province from 2012 to 2017

Abstract

Social vulnerability assessment is of great significance for risk management and reduction. Carrying out the assessment is beneficial to the sustainability of the development of society and the economy. For this purpose, Jiangsu province in China is taken as the study area to explore the social vulnerability assessment at a city level. A framework has been constructed from three dimensions of demographics, economics, and social security. In our study, a new approach based on the maximizing deviation method and TODIM model is proposed to evaluate social vulnerability in Jiangsu province. For the sake of analysis, we divide 13 cities of Jiangsu province into three parts, namely the southern part, central part, and northern part, according to the geographical location. As a result, the north part performance of social vulnerability is the worst among the three regions. The average of the northern part has always obviously exceeded the others of Jiangsu province from 2012 to 2017, which indicates that the north part is the most vulnerable to natural hazards. In addition, the performance of the southern part is relatively better than that of the central region. Especially, Suqian has always been at the bottom from 2012 to 2017, which reveals the ability to withstand natural disasters is the most insufficient. Our findings also imply that social vulnerability is related to local economic development to some extent.