Assessment and analysis of social vulnerability to island seismic disasters

Abstract

More than 11,000 islands in China are located at the intersection of the Circum-Pacific and Eurasian seismic belts. The current research on the Social Vulnerability of Seismic Disasters (SVSD) mainly focuses on inland area, which has limited applicability for islands field. This paper set China island counties as the research object. We established a comprehensive index system to express islands' unique SVSD characteristics, consisting of 27 indicators in three aspects: exposure, sensitivity, and coping capacity. Afterwards, taking China island counties as the research object, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Pearson correlation analysis were used to screen the indicators, and the CRITIC and entropy weight methods were used to assign weights. Then the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) was calculated to express the islands' SVSD, which is further discussed to get the spatial distribution and possible causes. The assessment method established in this paper could be a reference for quantitative analysis of the islands’ SVSD. This research is fundamental for the implementation of island seismic disaster prevention, mitigation planning, and sustainable development.