Abstract
The concept of socioeconomic vulnerability has made a substantial contribution to the understanding and conceptualization of health risk. To assess the spatial distribution of multi-dimensional socioeconomic vulnerability in an urban context, a vulnerability assessment scheme was proposed to guide decision-making in disaster resilience and sustainable urban development to reduce health risk. A two-stage approach was applied in Hong Kong to identify subgroups among Tertiary Planning Units (TPU) (i.e., the local geographic areas) with similar characteristics. In stage 1, principal components analysis was used for dimension reduction and to de-noise the socioeconomic data for each TPU based on the variables selected, while in stage 2, Gaussian mixture modeling was used to partition all the TPUs into different subgroups based on the results of stage 1. This study summarized socioeconomic-vulnerability-related data into five principal components, including indigenous degree, family resilience, individual productivity, populous grassroots, and young-age. According to these five principal components, all TPUs were clustered into five subgroups/clusters. Socioeconomic vulnerability is a concept that could be used to help identify areas susceptible to health risk, and even identify susceptible groups in affluent areas. More attention should be paid to areas with high populous grassroots scores and low young-age score since they were associated with a higher mortality rate.
Highlights
Risk is a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability
Tertiary Planning Units (TPU) 941, 942, and 943, located in the southwest corner of Hong Kong, were excluded in this study since the numbers of domestic households in each were too small and some related statistics derived based on such a small number of domestic households are not released from the government
This paper presents a two-stage approach, applying a Gaussian mixture model based on identified underlying dimensions of social vulnerability to demonstrate similarities and identify homogeneous subgroups among the TPUs in Hong Kong
Summary
Risk is a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. As highlighted in the WorldHealth Organization health emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) framework [1], the understanding and managing of health risk in non-emergency times are vital to protecting health and safeguarding development. Risk is a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. To fully comprehend health risk, the physical impact of a hazard that might affect people should be known, and how diverse the impact might be on different social groups, which is determined by social systems and power. In contrast with exposure, which is usually associated with a geographical location, vulnerability is a state of well-being and is socially differentiated [2]. When faced with the same hazard, people in different social groups will vary in vulnerability. If a hazard has an absolute impact, vulnerability affects how the impact is relatively received. Compared to the middle class or the rich, the poor are more vulnerable to hazards
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