Method to Measure Climate and Extreme Weather Vulnerability to Inform Port Resilience

Developer/Partners: URI, USACE (2018)

Relevant Hazard/Threat(s): Climate change and extreme weather

Intent: Indicator-based vulnerability assessment (IBVA) method to differentiate and rank relative vulnerability between ports and shows promise to differentiate outlier ports within a set

This resource is a methodology published within a report. It outlines a process by which to index climate vulerability through both open source data and expert elicitation. The study interviewed experts at 22 seaports in the Northeast to identify indicators that describe three components of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. These indicators were all based on open source data and were weighed according to their contribuiton to vulnerability. These indicators could be utilized by other port studies or the methodology could be repeated elsewhere.

Inputs: 48 open source data sets that covered a set of 22 ports within USACE NAD, expert input for an AHP to determine how indicators correlated with the components of vulnerability.
Outputs: Ranked ports by a composite vulnerability index derived from the top 12 ranking indicators

Were unable to find correlated indicators for "adaptive capacity", only used open sourced datasets