Climate change will increase the likelihood of adverse events such as droughts, forest fires, and intensification of tropical cyclones, which are known to cause flooding (IPCC, 2014). The effects of these events are a cause of concern for both authorities and citizens, so they prioritize actions that reduce adverse impacts, especially in cities with higher risk. Therefore, the objective of this work was to measure the degree of socio-environmental vulnerability of households to identify the risk areas in the city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, one of the regions with a high degree of incidence of hurricanes in the northwest of Mexico. For this, surveys were carried out with heads of households in 251 homes, and information was aggregated to calculate the vulnerability index through principal components analysis (PCA), which were stratified by the Dalenius-Hodges method, the degree of vulnerability was classified into three categories by the Opiyo method, considering three strata of the Likert scale, 1 = highly vulnerable, 2 = moderately vulnerable, 3 = less vulnerable. The results showed that households that are in the highly vulnerable category are 33% within a range of the index −3.77243 to −0.939141. Moderately vulnerable households constitute 36% with values from −0.929141 to 0.956385. While the least vulnerable represent 31% of households with an index range of 0.966385 to 5.6952. The results have revealed the levels of high and moderate socio-environmental vulnerability by tropical cyclones of 69% homes in La Paz. The above allowed to generate risk maps that will be taken into account in planning and civil protection over adverse events.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1575 2 of 11 depends on the differences between susceptibility, which includes exposure and sensitivity, and on the other hand, the ability to cope with or recover from the damage caused, which is known as resilience.One of the vulnerabilities due to heavy rainfall related to cyclones and rainfall is the large number of people in urban areas exposed to episodes of flooding, especially in informal settlements. It is estimated that about 600 million people by the year 2100 will be prone to hurricane impacts [2] and it is considered that the greatest effects of climate change will occur in coastal areas, as the average sea level will have increased by 38 cm from 1990 to 2080, the number of people susceptible to flooding in low-lying areas will increase five times [3].The destructive potential of tropical cyclones (TC) has increased markedly since the 1970s. According to Emanuel Kerry [4], the power dissipation of TC is highly correlated with the sea surface temperature, muti-decadal oscillations and global warming. The risk and exposure to natural disasters will be significantly increased if we consider the increase in the population that lives in coastal areas and the increase in the destructive potential of the TCs in both the North Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic. In the case of Mexico, during the last three decades, both exposure factors and v...

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Coastal cities have seen an unprecedented growth with regional settlements due to development activities; that is why measures are needed to mitigate risk of adverse events such as tropical cyclones. Baja California Sur, a state known as a relevant ecological and tourist region, includes destinations such as Cabo San Lucas and La Paz, impacted yearly by tropical cyclones, so it is important to design contingency plans and provide available information to the residents. Los Cabos municipality has the highest population growth rate and its inhabitants are more susceptible to adverse events; despite this, there were no indicators of social and ecological vulnerability to risk effects of tropical cyclones. The objective of this research is to calculate the socio-environmental vulnerability of households through an index to identify risk factors. We have obtained a classification according to levels of vulnerability, and the results have shown that 74% of the households are high on the vulnerability scale, 21% of households are moderately vulnerable and only the remaining 5% of households are less vulnerable. In conclusion, the devastating effects of hydrometeorological events were mainly due to a lack of knowledge regarding such events among inhabitants.

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