Characterizing the Nature of Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Inner-City Households: Case of Jiaxing, China

As an increasingly urbanized country, China faces significant disaster risks. Social vulnerability influences the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Quantifying social vulnerability is a worthwhile study because it can provide information vital to understanding the interactions among individuals, communities, and society and can further help us improve disaster risk mitigation. Therefore, this paper presents a case study on the social vulnerability assessment of the inner area of Jiaxing, China. With household questionnaire data, we calculated the social vulnerability index (SoVI) through categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA). We also presented a holistic and detailed profile of social vulnerability that links three different levels (e.g., households, apartment blocks, and communities) and contains four aspects of SoVI, such as statistical information, spatial pattern, dimension attributes, and risk state combinations of variables. This profile also responded to criticisms about the index method’s reductionist nature. Our results retained as much valuable information as we could, enabling a more holistic understanding of demographic, environmental, and social conditions that influence social vulnerability to disasters in the inner city of Jiaxing.