Assessment of vulnerability to climate change using a multi-criteria outranking approach with application to heat stress in Sydney |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney, Civil Building J05, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia;2. School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia;1. Department of Geography, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada;2. Sustainability Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Locked Bag 4, Maroochydore DC, Queensland, 4558, Australia;3. Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC, H3A 0B9, Canada;4. Priestley Centre for International Climate, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom;1. Technische Universität Berlin, Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Geoinformation in Environmental Planning Lab, Berlin, Germany;2. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Dept. of Geography, Geoinformation Science Lab, Berlin, Germany;1. Battelle Memorial Institute, 505 King Avenue, Columbus, OH 43201, USA;2. CIESIN, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, 61Route 9W, PO Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964 USA;1. Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong;2. Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada;3. Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA;4. Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada;5. Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;6. Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA;7. Social Science Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA;1. Department of Statistics, Brigham Young University, 223 TMCB, Provo, UT 84602, United States;2. Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Box 80307-3000, Boulder, CO, United States;3. Research Applications Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Box 80307-3000, Boulder, CO, United States;4. Department of Geography, Florida State University, PO Box 3062190, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2190, United States;5. Houston Department of Public Health and Human Services, Box 1652, Houston, TX 77054, United States |
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| Abstract: | Climate change vulnerability assessment is a complex form of risk assessment which accounts for both geophysical and socio-economic components of risk. In indicator-based vulnerability assessment (IBVA), indicators are used to rank the vulnerabilities of socio-ecological systems (SESs). The predominant aggregation approach in the literature, sometimes based on multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), typically builds a global-scale, utility function based on weighted summation, to generate rankings. However, the corresponding requirement for additive independence and complete knowledge of system interactions by analyst are rarely if ever satisfied in IBVA.We build an analogy between the structures of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and IBVA problems and show that a set of techniques called Outranking Methods, developed in MCDA to deal with criteria incommensurability, data uncertainty and preference imprecision, offer IBVA a sound alternative to additive or multiplicative aggregation. We reformulate IBVA problems within an outranking framework, define thresholds of difference and use an outranking method, ELECTRE III, to assess the relative vulnerability to heat stress of 15 local government areas in metropolitan Sydney. We find that the ranking outcomes are robust and argue that an outranking approach is better suited for assessments characterized by a mix of qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative indicators, threshold effects and uncertainties about the exact relationships between indicators and vulnerability. |
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| Keywords: | Multiple criteria analysis Climate change Vulnerability assessment Aggregation Outranking procedures Heat stress |
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