Assessment of vulnerability to climate hazards in municipality of Lom, Bulgaria

Abstract

An important part of the natural hazard’s risk management is the vulnerability assessment. There are many publications proposing different systems of indicators and tools for vulnerability assessment, but very few of them are dealing with the problem on community level. The study for municipality of Lom is carried out on the base of a framework for vulnerability assessment which includes the following important elements: hazard probability, exposure, sensitivity and coping capacity. In this paper we use the spatial dimensions of the areas prone to a particular climate hazard as an indicator for the level of exposure to this hazard. We introduce a measure for the system sensitivity as a function of hazard and exposure classes assigned to these areas. On the base of a system of indicators and scores for the hazard, exposure, sensitivity and capacity, is estimated a Vulnerability Index for municipality of Lom. The results from this case study show that implementation of the proposed Vulnerability Assessment Method provide reliable information for the level of vulnerability to ten climate hazards. It may be of use for different risk management purposes.

Keywords

• Climate hazards
• Vulnerability Index
• Vulnerability Maps