Abstract
To prepare for upcoming extreme events, decision makers, scientists and other stakeholders require a thorough understanding of the vulnerability of the built environment to natural hazards. A vulnerability index based on building characteristics (indicators) rather than empirical data may be an alternative approach to a comprehensive physical vulnerability assessment of the building stock. The present paper focuses on the making of such an index for dynamic flooding in mountain areas demonstrating the transferability of vulnerability assessment approaches between hazard types, reducing the amount of required data and offering a tool that can be used in areas were empirical data are not available. We use data from systematically documented torrential events in the European Alps to select and weight the important indicators using an all-relevant feature selection algorithm based on random forests. The permutation-based feature selection reduced the initial number of indicators from 22 to seven, decreasing in this way the amount of required data for assessing physical vulnerability and ensuring that only relevant indicators are considered. The new Physical Vulnerability Index (PVI) may be used in the mountain areas of Europe and beyond where only few empirical data are available supporting decision-making in reducing risk to dynamic flooding.
Highlights
To prepare for upcoming extreme events, decision makers, scientists and other stakeholders require a thorough understanding of the vulnerability of the built environment to natural hazards
Mountain areas are sensitive to climate change, experience significant socio-economic dynamics, have insufficient space for settlement and often face challenges related to limited communication networks due to their remoteness
In the present paper a modified version of this method will be used to prove its application for dynamic flooding in mountain areas
Summary
To prepare for upcoming extreme events, decision makers, scientists and other stakeholders require a thorough understanding of the vulnerability of the built environment to natural hazards. The use of indicators is common for more hazard types there are significant differences concerning the selection and scoring of indicators, scale, unit of study (building, building block, administrative area) and weighting method. Tsunamis affect large and flat coastal areas, whereas flooding in mountain areas often impact small settlements located on steep slopes or within small catchments For both types of hazards empirically-derived vulnerability curves have been used to show the relationship between magnitude and the observed degree of loss[16,17]. We test transferability of methods for damage assessment by modifying the PTVA that used indicators to assess the vulnerability of buildings exposed to tsunami impact, and approach the issue of vulnerability for dynamic flooding in mountain catchments
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