Coastal vulnerability assessment studies over India: a review

Abstract

Coastal areas are one of the key systems for global sustainability. These are the transition areas between land and sea. Coastal regions gained importance because of multiple uses, like high productivity of the ecosystem, highly concentrated population, industrial friendly, waste disposal, tourism, transportation, strategic planning in military and many more. These coasts are always in a dynamic state trying to change, and nature always works for maintaining the equilibrium. India, with most diverse ecosystem, high productivity and thickly populated over coastal region, has gained its very own importance. Despite all of these, Indian coasts are under threat due to multiple stresses like global climate change and human intervention. These stresses are driving vulnerabilities like sea-level rise, coastal erosion, frequent extreme events, and saltwater encroachment. In this critical scenario, coastal management has become one of the very important issues in the last two decades. Thus, coastal vulnerability assessment methods have been developed to identify and manage the vulnerable areas over the coast. In the present review, we focussed on different vulnerabilities to coast of India and one of the assessment methods, coastal vulnerability index methodology, applied over India. Vulnerability assessment is the process where we identify the problem, quantify it, and assess the risk rate in formulating development strategies to reduce the risk and vulnerabilities. Proper planning and protection strategies for Indian coast must be taken swiftly by the coastal management and policy makers to safeguard coastal ecosystem and livelihoods. In recent years, there has been much focus on coastal vulnerability assessments using various kinds of data. Most of the reported studies over Indian coast are based on remote sensing and GIS methods.