Assessing sensitivity to climate-related disasters in the context of a developing country: Evidence from the coastal region of Bangladesh

Climate-related disasters have become a major threat to human civilization. Since many climatic hazards cannot be prevented, recognizing the underlying factors that render societies more vulnerable might facilitate pragmatic measures for minimizing the likelihood of disasters. With this impulse, the current study developed an innovative framework for appraising various societal attributes, the interplay of which potentially adds to the vulnerabilities of the coastal region of Bangladesh. In our study, we harnessed the notion of sensitivity used in disaster discourse and proposed five major domains of sensitivity namely demographic setback, inadequacy of basic resources, economic marginality, socio-cultural impediments and fragility of policy and governance, based on the conceptual adaptation of the prior social vulnerability frameworks. A total of thirty-five context-specific variables were consolidated under these five domains. To determine the weights of the variables, the popular Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique was applied. Respective variables were summed up with appropriate weights to generate the five subindices which were eventually integrated using the additive (averaging) approach to develop a composite sensitivity index for the nineteen coastal districts. The outcomes of the sensitivity assessment were spatially mapped. Coxsbazar (0.60), Pirojpur (0.39) Bagerhat (0.38), Shariatpur (0.37), Patuakhali (0.34), and Chandpur (0.33) were the most sensitive districts, which is attributable to diverse key factors. Our study thus delineates the areas that require prioritized actions for reducing vulnerability and offers an opportunity to improve the prevailing interventions aimed at Disaster Risk Reduction across the coastal region of Bangladesh. Moreover, the integration of factors like child labor, violence against women, early marriage of girls, corruption, and crime that have not been previously considered, but often act as factors shaping increased vulnerability render the current framework a conceptual advancement for understanding sensitivity to climaterelated disasters in other developing countries of the world.