Social and Environmental Vulnerability to Flooding: Investigating Cross-Scale Hypotheses
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Hinojos, Selena
- Graduate Program:
- Civil Engineering (MS)
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 13, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Caitlin A Grady, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Lauren Mc Phillips, Committee Member
Patrick Fox, Program Head/Chair
Peter Stempel, Committee Member - Keywords:
- MAUP
Scale
Flood Vulnerability
Modifiable Areal Unit Problem
Social Vulnerability - Abstract:
- Flooding is a natural hazard that touches nearly all facets of the globe in some capacity. The exposure of communities to flooding is only projected to become more frequent and intensified due to climate and land-use change; therefore, it is vital to understand how flooding impacts are distributed across populations. An approach to mapping the landscape of geographic flood-disadvantaged communities is through the use of a social vulnerability index. This measurement scheme is reliant on aggregated socioeconomic and demographic data that can be curated at several scales and subject to the effects of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). Understanding how the selection of scale influences flood vulnerability results is relatively limited in literature and advantageous as this information could inform future decision-making for allocating resources that support communities most in need. This multi-scale flood risk analysis integrated social vulnerability, land cover, and flood hazard data to investigate the relationship of vulnerable populations to varying levels of flood exposure across the block group, tract, and county scales within coastal Virginia – a highly populated region facing land subsidence, unusually high tides, rising sea level, and elevated surface and riverine flooding. The deviation and similarities of social correlates of vulnerability to flooding were investigated across scales. Additionally, the geography of local clusters and spatial outliers of social vulnerability to flood exposure, determined through a bivariate Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) analysis, was utilized to identify social inequities within the floodplain and how those deviated across scales. I found that the aggregation of geographic units and the selection of scale has considerable impacts on the social vulnerability and flood risk results. There are instances where increased aggregated scales significantly undercounted highly vulnerable populations. Similar trends occurred for areas of high vulnerability and varying exposure which are target locations for current and future flood risk reduction. I also found that generally based on the integrated scale, the landscape of vulnerability and flood risk can identify different priority areas which can be a real-life consequence of the MAUP. These results warrant the discussion of understanding the implications of scale selection on research methodological approaches and what this means for practitioners and policymakers that utilize social vulnerability information to help guide flood mitigation strategies.