An Operational Framework for Urban Vulnerability to Floods in the Guayas Estuary Region: The Duran Case Study

Abstract

Duran is a coastal city located in the Guayas Estuary region in which 24% of urban sectors suffers from the effects of chronic flooding. This study seeks to assess the causes of Duran’s vulnerability by considering exposure, population sensitivity and adaptive capacity to establish alternatives to reduce its vulnerability to flooding. An operational framework is proposed based on the vulnerability definition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and applying a census-based Index of Vulnerability, a geographic information system and local knowledge of urban development. A Principal Component and equal weighting analysis were applied as well as a spatial clustering to explore the spatial vulnerability across the city. A total of 34% of the city area is mapped as having high and very high vulnerability, mostly occupied by informal settlements (e.g., 288 hectares). Underlying factors were poor quality housing, lack of city services and low adaptive capacity of the community. However, some government housing programs (e.g., El Recreo), with better housing and adaptive capacity were also highly vulnerable. Limited urban planning governance has led to the overloading of storm water and drainage infrastructure which cause chronic flooding. Understanding the underlying causes of vulnerability is critical in order develop integrated strategies that increase city resilience to climate change.

Flood Vulnerability Analysis in Urban Context: A Socioeconomic Sub-Indicators Overview

“…In the set of 25 papers focusing on risk analysis, different combinations of indicators are found although the usual definition of risk should be H × E × V as suggested by [23,24]. In fact, only 10 out of 25 apply the definition as above suggested.…”

Investigating Climate Change Risk of “ Oil and Gas” City: Case of Dumai City, Indonesia

“…The results of adaptation and simplification of the approach can be seen in figure 3. Based on the research stages in figure 3, variables and indicators (Table 1) are formulated that refer to several references [14,15,17,18]. One of the criteria for selecting indicators for risk analysis is based on data availability [18].…”

“…One of the criteria for selecting indicators for risk analysis is based on data availability [18]. The criteria for each indicator are determined based on the adaptation of [15] and [14] according to the characteristics of the data in each indicator. The number of classes used is 5 (five) namely very low, low, medium, high, and very high.…”

“…The risk components used in this research are hazard (H) and vulnerability (V). Several indicators on the vulnerability component were adapted from Borbor-Cordova et al, 2020 and Liu et al, 2020, whose studies about vulnerability of coastal flooding respectively in the Guaya River Estuary, Duran City (Ecuador) and Laizhou Bay (China) [14,15].…”

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“…collaboration led to the development of the "Operational Framework for Urban Vulnerability to Floods on the Guayas Estuary Coast: The Duran Case Study" (Borbor-Cordova et al, 2020).…”