Social vulnerability to floods in two coastal megacities: New York City and Mumbai

Abstract

In this paper we assess differential exposure to flooding in two coastal megacities, New York and Mumbai, both of which suffered major flood-related disasters in the past decade. Specifically, we examine whether the most exposed populations are also the most socially vulnerable. First, we developed Social Vulnerability Indices (SoVIs) for each city with census data. We then overlaid the SoVI scores onto flood extent maps for Hurricane Sandy (New York, October 2012) and the Mumbai flash floods (July 2005), as well as for the evacuation zones for New York, to examine patterns of differential exposure. Our results suggest a degree of differential exposure in New York, especially in the highest flood risk areas, and provide fairly clear evidence for differential exposure in Mumbai. However, differences in the input resolution and confidence in the datasets for Mumbai make the results more uncertain. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications and the data needs for urban spatial vulnerability assessments.

New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report Chapter 6: Community‐Based Assessments of Adaptation and Equity

“…and ). Results of the de Sherbinin and Bardy () analysis reveal similar distributions of social vulnerability to climate stressors (flooding) across city neighborhoods. They examined spatial vulnerabilities across block groups using the general SoVI approach but reduced the number of variables to 21 (variables that were not available at the block group level were excluded from the analysis).…”

“…Social vulnerability to floods in New York City at census block group level using a modified SOVI in which component scores are equally weighted, added together, and averaged (de Sherbinin and Bardy, ). N ote : NPCC3 community case study neighborhoods are circled.…”

“…While patterns of social vulnerability largely overlap across the two SoVI‐based New York City studies, a key difference among them stems from the unit of analysis. In the visualizations in Figures and , the finer spatial detail provided by the block group analysis in de Sherbinin and Bardy () appears to reveal greater concentrations of highly vulnerable block groups in some areas than are apparent from the census tract results in the Nature Conservancy () analysis.…”

“…The New York City studies were used to illustrate how the SoVI approach has been applied to examine distributional vulnerabilities to climate changerelated coastal flood risk at the neighborhood level (see Table 6.3). These include the Nature Conservancy Mapping Portal (2013) and a study by de Sherbinin and Bardy (2015). Each of these studies follows the prescribed SoVI framework by Cutter et al (2003) with modifications of variable selection in some instances.…”

Spatial Analysis of Social Vulnerability to Floods Based on the MOVE Framework and Information Entropy Method: Case Study of Katsushika Ward, Tokyo

“…The social vulnerability assessment is an important step in building regional robustness against flood risks [14,15], and helps identify and measure local factors of vulnerability [16,17]. Research on social vulnerability to disasters has gained attention in recent years [12,18,19].…”