Social vulnerability assessment is an important element for disaster risk reduction system. Social vulnerability depends on physical, social, economic, environmental factors, etc., which determine the susceptibility of community against the impact of hazards. Over the past two decades, social vulnerability has been measured by using different methodologies. The present work portrays a comparative assessment of social vulnerability methodologies in the Purba Medinipur district located in the eastern part of India. Different standardization techniques of data transformation like, Z score, maximum value, and min-max rescaling have been employed to compare and examine social vulnerability in the study area. The principal aim of this work is to analyze the results between the three methodologies adopted, and identify the vulnerable blocks in the district. The result shows that relationships between three methodologies are moderately strong to very strong and Sutahata block is identified as the most vulnerable block in the Purba Medinipur district.

The aim of the study is to delineate the morphometric characteristics of Kangshabati-Darkeswar Interfluves Area using remote sensing and GIS technology. 10 km 2 grids were elaborate to delineate the relief characteristics using Advance Space Thermal Emission and Radiometer (ASTER) data. Drainage networks were automatically extracted from digital aster elevation models. Second order local polynomial (LP) interpolation technique was used to estimate the surface characteristics of the study area using ArcGIS 9.3. The absolute elevation of the study region is extended between 4.0-949.29 m with an average elevation of 484.50 m. The highest relative relief resulted 833.69 m, whereas the average ruggedness index of the study area is recorded as 0.09 per 10 km 2 area. The average drainage density of the study area was computed 0.73/sq. km and the highest drainage intensity are recorded as 9.58/10 km 2 grid area. The average length of overland flow of the study area was 2.56/10 km 2 grid areas. The result of the study highlights an about the spatial distribution of relief and hydrological characteristics which may provide the knowledge to devise and accomplish an appropriate plan to progress agriculture and others allied activities. Hence, from the study, it can be concluded that remote sensing data (ASTER -DEM) coupled with GIS techniques prove to be a competent tool in morphometric analysis and the data can be used for basin or interfluves area management and other hydrological studies in future.

Hazards are any sort of extreme events that occurred by natural causes, human activities or sometimes both reasons are responsible. Social vulnerability exposes people’s condition in hazards. To prevent the loss and damages by hazards, it is necessary to identify vulnerable population of a region by constructing social vulnerability maps of that region. Here in this work, study region is Malaga province, located in southern part of Spain, under the autonomous community of Andalusia. 23 key indicators have been adopted to understand the vulnerability of people in Malaga province at a municipality scale. Three different standardization methodologies (maximum value transformation, z score transformation and min–max rescaling transformation) have been used to build five vulnerable zones. There exists strong to very strong relationship between the results obtained by using three methodologies. The final result shows that most socio-economically vulnerable municipalities are located mainly in western part of the Malaga province.

Floods are one of the most common quasi-natural hazards in costal districts of West Bengal, India and thousands of people are affected every year. From the destruction of crop lands and buildings to the disruption of balance of the environment and the spreading of disease, floods can devastate entire regions. The risk of flood depends on the flood intensity, frequency, and duration, the vulnerability of the people, etc. The spatiality of flood risk is still insufficient at micro level study for the management of resource disasters. In consequence, the present study on ‘flood risk mapping’ is performed in Purba Medinipur (one of the coastal districts of West Bengal, India) by considering the flood frequency and vulnerability of the people as flood risk components. The frequency of floods from 2002 to 2019 is considered as a variable of assessment and twenty-five key indicators are employed to understand the vulnerability of the people of the region. From the analysis, Moyna emerges as the highest flood risk prone block and Contai-I is the least flood prone block of the district. The results can help to minimize the chances of death, injury, loss, or harm and establish a good disaster management plan against floods.

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