Prioritisation Mapping of Vulnerable Districts of India Based on Multi-Criteria Analysis of Some Selected Parameters

Abstract

The vulnerability of a region can be assessed through multiple criteria such as environmental degradation, climatic variability, population dynamics, economic development, etc. The consequential assessment of vulnerability of a state or country is generally represented by index, rank, level, class or category. Often, one index is not comparable with another in terms of scale/variability; diverse cross-sectional analysis is required to sum up, as the vulnerability of a region is not the consequence of any single parameter. A multi-criteria assessment has been attempted in the present paper using the membership function of a Fuzzy set, instead of a crisp index/ranking. The available data of two broad categories, viz., geospatial parameters like sensitivity, adaptive capacity, exposure, bio-physical and livelihood-based indicators, etc., and socio-economic parameters like poverty, backwardness index, population density, GDP, etc., have been used for the analysis. The indices of these parameters are normalised to a common scale, and compound vulnerability has been derived through fuzzy operators/ expressions. A district is treated as ‘vulnerable’ either geo-spatially or socio-economically, as per the derived fuzzy rule-based inferences. Spatial distribution of vulnerable districts across the states/regions of India has been depicted using a GIS tool. As many as 195 districts across the country have been found high to critically vulnerable and need to be prioritised to minimise its adversity. It is alarming that two-thirds of critically vulnerable districts fall in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. The Fuzzy logic approach is not used for highly quantitative empirical data, but for analysing ambiguous and conflicting viewpoints. The paper has attempted to derive a collective vulnerability from multiple indices using fuzzy rule.