Mapping Social Vulnerability in Switzerland

Natural and anthropogenic hazards cause significant damages globally, destroying lives, health, property, and disturbing social, economic and ecological systems. Risk maps have become a central element in modern disaster risk management research and practice, helping to reduce these impacts. Risk maps combine three types of information: information on the hazard; how people and assets are exposed; and, an estimate of how vulnerable exposed assets (and people) are relative to the hazard in question. While structural vulnerability is typically addressed in this model, social vulnerability is often not considered. Improving the precision of social vulnerability estimates for accurate risk maps is important to properly understand risk to society. This report details a pilot study that sought to understand and map social vulnerability to flood hazard in the city of Zürich. We develop a theoretical basis, and practical methodology to identify key factors of social vulnerability and their interdependencies. These social characteristics are mapped to identify ‘hotspots’ of flood-related social vulnerability in the city. Unlike most previous research on social vulnerability to hazards, this report combines social factors that have been found to influence and exaggerate social vulnerability to hazards. This approach captures the interdependence of these social factors, providing a more realistic representation of the complexity of social systems. In addition, the research team sought to align the selection of social vulnerability factor ‘categories’ with the Swiss Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) cycle, ensuring that results from the mapping results could be directly related to organizational civil protection actions.