A New Approach to Identify Social Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Yangtze River Delta

Yi Ge, Wen Dou and Jianping Dai
Additional contact information
Yi Ge: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control & Resource Re-use, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Wen Dou: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Jianping Dai: Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: This paper explored a new approach regarding social vulnerability to climate change, and measured social vulnerability in three parts: (1) choosing relevant indicators of social vulnerability to climate change; (2) based on the Hazard Vulnerability Similarity Index (HVSI), our method provided a procedure to choose the referenced community objectively; and (3) ranked social vulnerability, exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability according to profiles of similarity matrix and specific attributes of referenced communities. This new approach was applied to a case study of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region and our findings included: (1) counties with a minimum and maximum social vulnerability index (SVI) were identified, which provided valuable examples to be followed or avoided in the mitigation planning and preparedness of other counties; (2) most counties in the study area were identified in high exposure, medium sensitivity, low adaptability, and medium SVI; (3) four cities, Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou were much less vulnerable than others due to their high adaptability; (4) to some extent, there were geographical similarities of SVI, exposure index, sensitivity index, and adaptability index; and (5) the indicator of “Employees in primary industry” related to SVI the most, the indicator of “Renter” related to exposure index (EI) most, the indicator of “Elderly” related to sensitivity index (SI) the most, and the indicator of “Urban residents” relates to adaptability index (AI) most. These results can help decision makers find the focus of their mitigation works, where the efficient of practices will then be improved.

Keywords: similarity; social vulnerability; climate change; the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2236/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2236/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:12:p:2236-:d:121501

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().