Computation of Socio-Economic Vulnerability for Densely Populated Surat City, India

The Surat city located alongside the banks of the lower Tapi River and at the inference of Arabian Sea. The densely populated Surat city is vulnerable to multiple hazards including extreme rainfall, urban (pluvial) and riverine flooding, tide surge, sea level rise, cyclones as well as human-induced hazard of industrial accidents. The current study focuses on the computation of socio-economic vulnerability of the Surat city area coming under the jurisdiction of the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) (area = 326.5 km2), by considering the risk to the population and asset in the area. The census-based indicators representing socio-economic status are identified for each ward of Surat city; the ward is considered as decision-making unit (DMU). The principal component analysis (PCA) is applied on the indicators for the dimensional reduction as well as to remove the possible co-relation amongst the indicators. Further, the decorrelated data (nearly 75% variability) used as input in the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to evaluate the vulnerability for each ward. The analysis performed on total 89 wards of the Surat city indicates that the major area within the city is under high to very high vulnerable category specifically densely populated areas. The low to medium vulnerable areas are mostly concentrated over the tail portion South-west zone. The developed socio-economic vulnerability maps will be useful to identify the susceptibility of flood prone Surat city against upcoming (flood) hazard, planning of mitigation strategies during flood risk assessment and to improve the flood resiliency of the society in near future.