Tracking Climate Change Vulnerability at Municipal Level in Rural Haiti Using Open Data

Abstract

In Least Developed tropical Countries, the vulnerability assessment to climate change (CC) at local scale follows an indicator-based approach and uses information gathered mainly through household surveys or focus groups. Conceived in this way, the vulnerability assessment is rarely repeatable in time, cannot be compared with those carried out in other contexts and usually has low spatial coverage. The growing availability of open data at municipal level, routinely collected, now allows us to switch to vulnerability tracking (continuous, low cost, consistent with global monitoring systems). The aim of this chapter is to propose and verify the applicability of a VICC-Vulnerability Index to Climate Change on a municipal scale for Haiti. The chapter identifies open data on national, departmental and municipal scale, selects the information on a municipal scale on the basis of quality, identifies the indicators, evaluates the robustness of the index and measures it. The index consists of 10 indicators created using information relating to monthly precipitations, population density, flood prone areas, crop deficit, farmers for self-consumption, rural accessibility, local plans for CC adaptation, irrigated agriculture and cholera incidence. This information is gathered for the 125 mainly rural municipalities of Haiti. The description and discussion of the results is followed by suggestions to improve the index aimed at donors, local authorities and users.