Developing Composite Indices for Assessing Vulnerability to Floods due to Climate Change: Applying the Order Rated Effectiveness Modeling Method

A major consequence of global environmental change is projected to be the alteration in flood periodicity, magnitude, and geographic patterns. There are a number of extant methods designed to help identify areas vulnerable to these consequences, the construction of composite vulnerability indices prominent among them. In this paper we have implemented the Order Rated Effectiveness (ORE) model ( Klimberg & Ratick, 2020 ) to produce composite flood vulnerability indicators through the aggregation of six constituent vulnerability indicators future projected for 204 hydrologic subbasins that cover the contiguous US. The ORE aggregation results, when compared with those obtained using the Weighted Linear Combination and Data Envelopment Analysis, provided a more robust and actionable distribution of composite vulnerability results for decision-makers when prioritizing Hydrologic Unit Codes for further analysis and for effectively and efficiently implementing adaptation and mitigation strategies to address the flooding consequences due to global climate change.