Assessment of social vulnerability to floods in the Samin watershed, Indonesia

Abstract

Floods are a natural hazard that has a major impact on society because of deaths, injuries, property damage, and economic losses. In the context of exposure to flooding, there is a gap between communities or individuals in each region in responding to and dealing with its impacts because of differences in demographic characteristics, regional structure, availability of facilities, and existing disaster prevention and management efforts. In this study, we assessed social vulnerability to flooding in the Samin watershed using the social vulnerability index (SoVI). Social vulnerability index is a quantitative measure that is widely applied to evaluate social vulnerability. This study compiles the stages of indicator selection, data collection, statistical analysis and normalisation, determination of indicator weights and dimensions using principal component analysis, aggregation of indicators, construction of SoVI, and mapping of results. The results show that dimensions related to demographics and exposure are the causes of the majority of social vulnerability variability. Other important dimensions include the socio-economic dimension and growth ratio.
Contribution: Spatial data-based social vulnerability measurement can be used by the government as a basis for formulating flood disaster management policies in the Samin watershed area.