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Assessment of provincial social vulnerability to natural disasters in China

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Abstract

Assessment of social vulnerability has been recognized as a critical step to understand natural hazard risks and to enhance effective response capabilities. Although significant achievements have been made in social vulnerability researches, little is know about the comprehensive profile of regional social vulnerability in China. In this study, the social vulnerability to natural hazards was firstly divided into socioeconomic and built environmental vulnerability. Then, using factor analysis, we identified the dominant factors that influence the provincial social vulnerability in China to natural hazards based on the socioeconomic and built environmental variables in 2000 and 2010 and explored the spatial patterns of social vulnerability. The results indicated that the provincial social vulnerability in China showed significant regional differences. The social vulnerability in the southeastern and eastern regions of China was greater than its northern and central parts over the past decade. Economic status, rural (proportion of agricultural population and percentage of workers employed in primary industries), urbanization, and age structure (children) were the dominant driving forces of variations in provincial socioeconomic vulnerability in two studied years, while lifelines and housing age could explain most of changes in built environmental vulnerability in 2000 and 2010. There were no statistically significant correlations between social vulnerability and disaster losses (p > 0.05), indicating the impact of disasters was also related to the intensity of hazards and exposure. Disaster relief funds allocated to each province of China depended more on its disaster severity than the regional integrated social vulnerability over the past decade. These findings would provide a scientific base for the policy making and implementation of disaster prevention and mitigation in China.

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Notes

  1. Disaster-related fatalities, economic losses were obtained from the China Civil Affairs Statistical Yearbook, which is collected by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China (MCAC) and publicly published by China Statistics Press (MCAC, 2012). This type of data is available during the period of 2000–2010 at the provincial level in addition to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

  2. Data on the total disaster relief funds allocated to each province in China are currently unavailable, but the China Rural Statistical Yearbook, which is published by Chinese Statistics Press, records the disaster relief funds in rural areas for each province since 1980. Therefore, the disaster relief funds allocated to cities are beyond the scope of the present study.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2012CB955402), International Cooperation Project funded by Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012DFG20710) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41171401). The authors also would like to thank anonymous reviewers who gave valuable suggestion that has helped to improve the quality of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, MOE, Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Yang Zhou, Ning Li & Jidong Wu

  2. Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Wenxiang Wu

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  1. Yang Zhou
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  2. Ning Li
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  3. Wenxiang Wu
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  4. Jidong Wu
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Correspondence to Ning Li.

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Zhou, Y., Li, N., Wu, W. et al. Assessment of provincial social vulnerability to natural disasters in China. Nat Hazards 71, 2165–2186 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-1003-5

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