Quantitative Vulnerability Assessment: An Approach to Reduce Biases in Disaster Vulnerability Assessment

Abstract

The cyclone vulnerability of women is much higher than men due to their poverty, social norms and marginal position in the social structure. Reducing women’s vulnerability is, therefore, imperative to improve the situation. However, the present practices of vulnerability assessment have several limitations. As an alternative, this study proposed and tested a weighted framework to assess the vulnerability in a quantitative form. The proposed framework considers 18 indicators carefully adapted from vulnerability literature. The indicator statuses were defined based on their vulnerability potentials and assigned an integer value. The higher the status value the greater the vulnerability potentials. The indicator’s status values were standardized, and their weights were estimated. The vulnerability scores for every indicator thereafter estimated by multiplying its status value by its weight. Finally, an individual’s vulnerability score was calculated by taking the average vulnerability scores of all the indicators. The framework was tested on 140 randomly selected cyclone-affected women from ten coastal villages of Bangladesh. The proposed scores-based vulnerability expresses the vulnerability status with an integer value easier to understand and allows spatial comparability. This framework could be improved further preferably through stakeholder consultations about the appropriateness of the indicators, indicator statuses, and their weights. An improved and well-agreed framework would assist in integrative policy formulation to reduce women’s vulnerability to cyclone disaster. Moreover, this approach could be adopted in vulnerability ranking/mapping for other disasters.