Methods Matter: Social Vulnerability Assessment Changes Drastically for Hierarchical and Inductive Approaches - a Case Study from Burkina Faso

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4575377
• Publication Date: 2023-09-18T20:17:23Z
• Authors: Lotte Savelberg; Ylenia Casali; Marc van den Homberg; Jazmin Zatarain S...; Tina Comes
• Keywords: Vulnerability; Social vulnerability

Social vulnerability assessments play a crucial role in guiding the allocation of budgets and resources for effective disaster preparedness humanitarian response. Climate change, escalating conflicts, climate finance funding gap make social essential. Despite advances data collection, availability, analysis, there remains lack consensus regarding most suitable method to assess vulnerability. This study sheds light on consequences methodological choices by comparing two commonly used methods space over time: inductive principal component approach hierarchical INFORM approach. Our analysis focuses case 351 communes Burkina Faso from 2015 2022, period marked conflicts extreme weather events. By methods, we find important differences rankings communes' investigating spatial temporal results, offer insights into potential using different choices. findings underscore need contextualized approaches.