Abstract A Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) was developed for Barbados to identify geospatial variations in social vulnerability. The SVI focused on socioeconomic status, gender, age, special needs and property type - represented by eight variables selected from census data. For the purposes of overlaying with hazard exposure mapping to assess hazard risk, the SVI that was developed is widely applicable and flexible. However, primarily because of the limitations of available georeferenced social data, the SVI provides only a very general indicator of the spatial distribution of vulnerability. Medium and high levels of social vulnerability appear to be widespread across Barbados with no discernible spatial pattern, reinforcing the importance of island-wide efforts to reduce vulnerability. Ultimately, the SVI is a useful starting point for further investigation of social vulnerability; the analysis showed what can and, perhaps as importantly, what cannot be determined about the spatial distribution of social vulnerability using existing available data. There is a need to validate the SVI, and improved data collection to record and evaluate post-disaster social impacts would enhance predictive tools. More extensive georeferenced social data collected during the decennial census would provide robust data to support the development of SVIs. However, census data may not offer solutions unless it is possible to spatially aggregate the data by smaller units that are more demographically homogeneous, and therefore, cross referencing with other data and/or strategically collecting additional data using the SVI as a framework.

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社会脆弱性指数：巴巴多斯——案例研究

摘要 为巴巴多斯开发了社会脆弱性指数 (SVI)，以识别社会脆弱性的地理空间变化。SVI 侧重于社会经济地位、性别、年龄、特殊需求和财产类型——由从人口普查数据中选出的八个变量代表。为了与危害暴露图叠加以评估危害风险，开发的 SVI 具有广泛的适用性和灵活性。然而，主要是由于可用地理参考社会数据的局限性，SVI 仅提供了脆弱性空间分布的非常一般的指标。巴巴多斯各地似乎普遍存在中等和高度的社会脆弱性，没有明显的空间格局，这加强了全岛努力减少脆弱性的重要性。最终，SVI 是进一步调查社会脆弱性的有用起点；分析表明，使用现有可用数据可以确定什么，或许同样重要的是，什么不能确定社会脆弱性的空间分布。需要验证 SVI，改进数据收集以记录和评估灾后社会影响将增强预测工具。在十年一次的人口普查期间收集的更广泛的地理参考社会数据将为支持 SVI 的开发提供可靠的数据。然而，人口普查数据可能无法提供解决方案，除非可以通过更小单位在空间上聚合数据，这些单位在人口统计上更同质，因此，与其他数据交叉引用和/或使用 SVI 作为框架战略性地收集额外数据。