Evaluating implications of flood vulnerability factors with respect to income levels for building long-term disaster resilience of low-income communities

Abstract

Communities residing in hazard-prone zones are more frequently affected by natural disasters and generally tend to bear higher losses than other communities. General factors such as sensitivity and adaptive capacity to a natural event determine the vulnerability of the communities. Several studies in this research area have claimed that both economic and socio-demographic factors are significant indicators of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. However, the possibility of a correlation between these two has not been thoroughly explored. In this study, we aimed to establish a method to identify the correlation of various vulnerability factors to the economic factor in a particular geographical location based on census data and historical flood hazard information. All factors of vulnerability do not affect all communities equally, and therefore it is necessary to devise a method that can be used to identify those factors of vulnerability that are specific to a community. This study was conducted for the low-income community as income has already been established as a significant indicator of adaptive capacity, responsible for reducing the resiliency of a community while responding to a natural disaster. Through the method proposed in the study, not only the factors specific to an area that renders the lower-income communities more vulnerable can be identified, but also the vulnerability scores of the communities can be analyzed to identify the most dominant factors. Thus, this method is expected to help in providing a direction to planning for risk management and development towards building long-term disaster resilience.