Methodology for identifying vulnerability hotspots to tropical cyclone hazard in India

Vulnerability indices are commonly used for characterizing the impacts on a region or comparing relative vulnerability across regions. Such indices are usually computed as a composite/aggregate across different components of vulnerability. Though such a single numerical value can be useful in many situations, a major disadvantage is that it leads to loss of information about how the different factors that went into making the composite index interact with each other, and contribute to making a place vulnerable. In this paper we develop an alternative approach for identifying hotspots, based on cluster analysis that seeks to address this problem by considering the different components of vulnerability separately. We compute different indices for each of the components of vulnerability. Cluster analysis helps in identifying the most vulnerable districts based on different combinations of the components of vulnerability. In addition to being methodologically more robust than the index approach, the clustering approach may have greater policy-relevance as it provides information about which aspects of vulnerability, policy needs to address in the most vulnerable districts. An erratum to this article can be found at