Classification and Evaluation of Current Climate Vulnerability Assessment Methods

Vulnerability to climate change is a complex, multi-dimensional construct influenced by multiple interacting factors. Several methods and approaches have been developed over the past three decades, yet there are no standard methods for assessing vulnerability (Connelly et al. in State of the art report (4) vulnerability assessment: definitions, indicators and existing assessment methods (issue 4), 2015). The vulnerability assessment studies differ in conceptualization, methodology, sectors affected, exposure to specific hazards, regional factors, and the scale of impact. Assessment of climate vulnerability and identification of indicators to measure it are significant problems. This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic review of indicator-based vulnerability assessment studies from 1990 to 2020. We analyse 84 studies to understand various aspects of vulnerability assessment—concept and approach, dimensions and indicators, and assessment methods. Though multi-dimensional assessments represent the overall vulnerability of an area, only 29.8% of the studies assessed more than one dimension. Analysis shows that 68.8% (75 of 109) of the identified indicators belong to the socioeconomic dimension. Socioeconomic vulnerability is the most assessed, and environmental vulnerability is the least assessed dimension, possibly attributed to ease of data availability. Due to the lack of methodological differences, there has been confusion associated with index-based and indicator-based studies in the literature (Ramieri et al. in Methods for assessing coastal vulnerability to climate change. ETC CCA Tech Paper 1/2011 (issue January), 2011. 10.13140/RG.2.1.1906.9840). Therefore, we develop a taxonomy of the existing vulnerability assessment methods based on their methodological approach. To avoid ambiguity, we denote all methods that employ indicators as indicator-based vulnerability assessment methods and classify them into index-based, clustering-based, and GIS-based methods. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each vulnerability assessment method and the open challenges in this research area.