Measuring Social Vulnerability to Climate Change at the Coast: Embracing Complexity and Context for More Accurate and Equitable Analysis

Abstract

Social vulnerability indices are often used to quantify differential vulnerability to the impacts of climate change within coastal communities. In this review, we examine how “tried and tested” methodologies for analysing social vulnerability to climate hazards at the coast are being challenged by a new wave of indices that offer more nuanced conclusions about who is vulnerable, how, and why. Instead of producing high-level, generalised, and static conclusions about vulnerability, this new wave of indices engages more deeply with the interlinked socioeconomic, cultural, political, and economic specificities of place, as well as the multi-scalar and temporal dynamics, incongruities, and inconsistencies that are inherent to peoples’ lived, felt experiences of social vulnerability. By integrating these complex observations into an output that is still readily accessible to decision- and policy-makers, the new wave of indices supports the pursuit of more tailored, context-appropriate, and equitable climate adaptation. We suggest one way that these more nuanced forms of vulnerability analyses might be operationalised, by reflecting on an experimental research project that uses personas or fictional characters to examine social vulnerability to climate change in coastal Aotearoa New Zealand.

Organisational vulnerability: exploring the pathways

“…The Risk-Hazard (RH) lineage stems from the natural hazards literature, and delineates, on a broad scale, the scope of vulnerability encompassing (a) the factors to which we are susceptible, (b) the anticipated consequences of such vulnerabilities, and (c) the spatial and temporal dimensions of the resulting impacts (Eakin and Luers, 2006;Johnson et al, 2023). The RH model has been employed to understand the impacts of hazards on an entity by considering its level of exposure to the hazard event and the entity's responsiveness to it.…”

“…The RH model has been employed to understand the impacts of hazards on an entity by considering its level of exposure to the hazard event and the entity's responsiveness to it. This model systematically recognises potential hazards that have the potential to affect an organisation, evaluates the corresponding risk (probability of hazard occurrence and implications for the organisation), and subsequently assigns priorities to vulnerabilities (Johnson et al, 2023). The vulnerability of the organisation or a system is thus viewed as being determined by the nature of the physical hazards confronting the organisation, the probability of occurrence of hazards, the organisation's level of exposure to hazards, and the system's susceptibility to the effects of hazards (Eakin and Luers, 2006).…”

“…As such vulnerability has been defined as: "the degree of loss to a given element at risk or set of elements at risk resulting from the occurrence of a natural phenomenon of a given magnitude and expressed on a scale from 0 (no damage) to 1 (total damage)" (UNDRO, 1991). The definitions of vulnerability from risk/hazard or biophysical approaches can be regarded as "hazard-dependent" where vulnerability is viewed as the amount of damage experienced by a system after being affected by a hazard (Johnson et al, 2023). In organisations, this definition of vulnerability is mostly related to an organisation's fixed assets such as buildings and structures at risk and how these are damaged by hazards, due to physical forces exerted by ground motion, wind, water, etc.…”

“…The Risk-Hazard (RH) lineage stems from the natural hazards literature, and delineates, on a broad scale, the scope of vulnerability encompassing (a) the factors to which we are susceptible, (b) the anticipated consequences of such vulnerabilities, and (c) the spatial and temporal dimensions of the resulting impacts (Eakin and Luers, 2006; Johnson et al. , 2023).…”

“…The RH model has been employed to understand the impacts of hazards on an entity by considering its level of exposure to the hazard event and the entity’s responsiveness to it. This model systematically recognises potential hazards that have the potential to affect an organisation, evaluates the corresponding risk (probability of hazard occurrence and implications for the organisation), and subsequently assigns priorities to vulnerabilities (Johnson et al. , 2023).…”