Revealing the Social Vulnerability of Communities to Disasters using a Composite Index based on Village-Level Poverty Data

This study was done to develop a barangay social vulnerability index (BSVI) for the purpose of prioritizing disaster resilience programs in local communities. Six (6) of the Community Based Monitoring System 13+1 Core Local Poverty Indicators were used in computing for the BSVI. Factor Analysis using Principal Component Analysis was able to identify 4 components of the index namely: Water Sanitation and Hygiene Inaccessibility (WASHI), Health and Nutrition Inadequacy (HNI), Financial Vulnerability (FV), and Vulnerability of Housing (VH). The factor loadings were used in the weighting process while normalization was done using Min-Max method. BSVI is computed using the linear additive aggregation. The BSVI was able to identify 5 moderately vulnerable barangays in Valencia City, Bukidnon, Philippines out of the 31 barangays in the city. Furthermore, index evaluation using a series of correlation analyses confirms the soundness of the mathematical architecture of the index