Social Vulnerability Metrics and Mapping

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Social Vulnerability Metrics and Mapping

• Susan L. Cutter
• Hazards Vulnerability Research Institute
• University of South Carolina

scutter_at_sc.edu
Living with Floods Conference March 11-12,
2009 Iowa City, Iowa
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Vulnerability and Resilience Science

• What circumstances place people and localities at
  risk?
• What enhances or reduces the ability to respond
  to environmental threats?
• What are the geographic patterns between and
  among places?
• Development of methods and metrics for
  analyzing societal vulnerability and resilience
  to environmental hazards and extreme events

Goal Provide scientific basis for disaster and
hazard reduction policies
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Problem Disparities in vulnerability,
inequalities in impacts
Social Systems
Inherent Vulnerability
Built Environment
Inherent Resilience
Natural Systems
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Social Vulnerability

• Identification of population characteristics that
  influence the social burdens of risks
• How those factors affect the distribution of
  risks and losses

Based on extensive post-disaster field work
monitoring the location of losses including
surveys of affected populations as well as
pre-impact studies
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Some US examples

• Special needs populations
• difficult to identify (infirm, transient) let
  alone measure invariably left out of recovery
  efforts often invisible in communities
• Age (elderly and children)
• affect mobility out of harms way need
  special care more susceptible to harm
• Socioeconomic status (rich poor)
• ability to absorb losses and recover
  (insurance, social safety nets), but more
  material goods to lose
• Race and ethnicity (non-white non-Anglo)
• impose language and cultural barriers
  affect access to post-disaster recovery funding
  tend to occupy high hazard zones
• Gender (women)
• gender-specific employment, lower wages,
  care-giving role
• Housing type and tenure (mobile homes, renters)

Heinz Center, 2002. Human Links to Coastal
Disasters. Washington D.C. The H. John Heinz
III Center for Science, Economics and the
Environment.
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Mapping social vulnerability The Social
Vulnerability Index (SoVI)

• County level socioeconomic profiles based on
  decennial census
• 1960-2000
• 42 variables reduced to factors (11)
• Explains 74 to 76 of variance in
• data

See Cutter et al. 2003. Social Vulnerability to
Environmental Hazards, Social Science Quarterly
84 (1) 242-261.
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Social Vulnerability Factors

• Socioeconomic status
• Development density
• Age
• Race and gender (Black females)
• Rural

• Race-Asian
• Economic dependence (debt/revenue)
• Ethnicity-Hispanic
• Migration/growth
• Gendered employment (Working women)

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Mapping Social Vulnerability
sovius.org
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Advancements in Social Vulnerability Metrics
sovius.org
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http//www.sovius.org
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Downscaling to Metro areas
Components Race/ethnicity class Age
ethnicity (Hispanic kids) Urban/rural Elderly
Variance explained 75.2 8 factors N1404
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• Deployment of NGO response assets
• Targeting of special needs populations

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Integrating hazards and social vulnerability
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9 factors, 76.7 variance explained,
socioeconomic status (poverty), race/ethnicity
(Hispanics), age (elderly)
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(No Transcript)
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Catastrophic Failures
Mormon Slough
Pocket
Modeled levee failure in HAZUS-MH
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Mormon Slough
Pocket
Images from Google Earth
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Disparities in Impacts
Pocket scenario
Mormon Slough scenario
Burton, C. and S. L. Cutter, 2008. Levee
failures and social vulnerability in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area, California,
Natural Hazards Review 9 (3) 136-149.
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74.9 variance explained by 7 factors race
class, young families, housing project
residents, elderly, Hispanics, special needs,
natural resources employment
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REDO SLIDE
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Assess and monitor social and spatial
inequalities in impacts and recovery

• Pre-event determinations
• Vulnerability and resilience
• Preparedness, response,
• recovery, and mitigation

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Take home messages

• Social metrics possible to construct and scale
• Intersection of social and physical process
  possible within a geospatial framework
• More work on built environment
• More work on social resilience (or adaptive
  capacity) within a geospatial environment

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http//www.cas.sc.edu/geog/hrl

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Visualizing SoVI and Mortality