Assessing typhoon disaster mitigation capacity and its uncertainty analysis in Hainan, China

Natural disasters occur frequently worldwide, causing serious harm to people, resources, and the environment. The disaster mitigation capacity is very important in reducing disaster-caused losses and in informing natural disaster prevention and mitigation plans. However, the disaster mitigation capacity frameworks in recent studies are inconsistent and lack the careful consideration of natural disaster occurrence process, and it remains unclear to what extent the model parameters may affect the robustness of assessment results. To solve this problem, with typhoons as an example, an assessment framework of typhoon disaster mitigation capacity (TDMC) based on the entire process of disaster prevention–resistance–rescue was developed in this study. The TDMC framework was applied in Hainan, China, as a case study, and the associated uncertainty was assessed by analyzing indicator selection and weighting and synthesis methods. The TDMC was very high in Haikou and Sanya but very low in Lingao, Ledong, and Dongfang. Iterative sensitivity analysis of the indicators revealed that the removal of different indicators had little effect on the percentage change in average TDMC of Hainan. The sensitive indicators were warning systems, emergency shelters, and insurance, suggesting that specific strategies for those indicators could improve regional TDMC. The assessment results with different indicator weighting and synthesis methods were generally robust, especially in counties with very low or high TDMC. However, the counties with medium TDMC showed higher sensitivity, which led to changes in TDMC indices. Assessments were more sensitive to changes in weighting method than to changes in synthesis method. This study demonstrated the importance of quantifying uncertainties in assessment model parameters to provide credible TDMC information and to further the effective design of disaster prevention and mitigation strategies.