Incorporating stakeholders’ knowledge into assessing vulnerability to climatic hazards: application to the river basin management in Taiwan

There is a growing research interest on the transdisciplinary measurement of vulnerability to climatic hazards from the perspective of integrated river basin management. However, the incorporation of stakeholders’ participation, local knowledge and locally spatial characteristics into the process of such vulnerability assessment is one of the challenges faced by decision-makers, especially in developing countries. This article proposes a novel methodology for assessing and communicating vulnerability to policymaking at the river basin level through a case study of Tachia River basin in Taiwan. The authors used a multicriteria decision analysis to develop an integrated vulnerability index applied to a participatory geographic information system (GIS) to map vulnerability to climatic hazards. Using a GIS-based spatial statistics technique and multivariate analysis, we test the degree to which vulnerabilities are spatially autocorrelated throughout the river basin, explain why clustering of vulnerable areas occurs in specific locations, and why some regions are particularly vulnerable. Results demonstrate that vulnerable areas are spatially correlated across the river basin. Moreover, exposure, biophysical sensitivity, land uses and adaptive capacity are key factors contributing to the formation of localized ‘hot spots’ of similarly and particularly vulnerable areas. Finally, we discuss how the findings provide direction for more effective approaches to river basin planning and management. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013