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Determinants of residential vulnerability to flood hazards in Metro Vancouver, Canada

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Abstract

What influences residents’ vulnerability to flood hazards in a Canadian coastal city? This study addresses the question by identifying and testing hypothetical determinants of residential vulnerability to flood hazards in Metro Vancouver. A household survey is conducted in four neighbourhoods in Vancouver and Surrey to test seven determinants: (1) social vulnerability, (2) hazard perception, (3) institutional arrangements, (4) amenity value conflicts, (5) self-protection, (6) attribution of responsibility, and (7) attenuation of risk due to another dominating concern. Survey findings offer insights into how these determinants interact to produce unequal vulnerability to flood hazards among residents in a Canadian city. The study finds that social vulnerability is an important factor in determining overall vulnerability to flood hazards. Household income, as a key contributor to social vulnerability, is found to have significant correlations with variables that define the other determinants. Institutional arrangements, including property insurance and development regulations, appear to interact with social vulnerability and the other determinants to allow powerful groups of people to live in hazardous places without taking on the full associated risk. The findings of the study have implications for our understanding of how vulnerability is produced and how, or whether, local policy can address these factors to equitably reduce risk.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Vancouver and Surrey residents who participated in this study and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. The study was conducted as part of the Coastal Cities at Risk project, funded by the International Research Initiative on Adaptation to Climate Change (IRIACC). Managed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), IRIACC is the result of a unique funding collaboration between IDRC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. SSHRC also provided doctoral fellowship funding to the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St, London, ON, N6A 5C2, Canada

    Greg Oulahen, Dan Shrubsole & Gordon McBean

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  1. Greg Oulahen
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  2. Dan Shrubsole
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  3. Gordon McBean
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Correspondence to Greg Oulahen.

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Oulahen, G., Shrubsole, D. & McBean, G. Determinants of residential vulnerability to flood hazards in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Nat Hazards 78, 939–956 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1751-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1751-5

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