Social Vulnerability Index

1. Cutter et al. (2003) state in their introduction that comparisons in social vulnerability across geographic space are rare yet significant. The authors aim to address this issue through mapping social vulnerability index (SoVI) values for the United States on a county level. This kind of comparison between geographic units seems important if indices are to be used to judge where to devote resources or time. Thus, being able to reproduce or replicate the workflow for creating social vulnerability indices would seem vital to using these models for different countries, for which input data may differ. Based on what I have seen from the social vulnerability index work we have conducted with Malcomb et al. (2014), this feeling is amplified. Professor Holler has spoken in class about the potential for applying the index used in the Malcomb study to other African countries, which speaks to the necessity for the index to be able to be replicated with different data. It may not be simple to do so due to the sources which those researchers used, for other researchers may have to find analogous sources which may well not exist.

2. Most simply, I have learned to be consistent with the definitions of components of a multi-critieria model. I would seek to define terms early on, as Cutter et al. (2003) do in their Table 1. I would also establish the sources from which I am obtaining each component. This kind of approach could be applied to other multi-critieria models besides SoVI or the model used by Malcomb et al. (2014).

Cutter, S. L., Boruff, B. J., & Shirley, W. L. (2003). Social vulnerability to environmental hazards. Social Science Quarterly, 84(2), 242–261. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002.

Malcomb, D. W., E. A. Weaver, and A. R. Krakowka. 2014. Vulnerability modeling for sub-Saharan Africa: An operationalized approach in Malawi. Applied Geography 48:17–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2014.01.004.