Social vulnerability correlates of flood risk to crops and buildings

The severity of flood impacts is influenced by social vulnerability, which stems from marginalization processes that depress a community’s ability to mitigate and recover from flood events. Understanding how social vulnerability operates in different flood contexts informs who is most susceptible to which types of impacts. This study examines the empirical relationship between social vulnerability and flood risk and how that relationship varies by element at risk and flood magnitude. Using inputs of social vulnerability indicators and flood risk to crops and buildings, we employed spatial clustering and spatial regression to determine which social vulnerability characteristics are most associated with economic risk. Regions with high crop risk are associated with more natural resource-based employment and housing tenure, while low-risk regions are less linguistically isolated. For buildings, high-risk regions have higher proportions of renters and lower proportions of racial minorities, while low-risk areas are associated with mobile homes and vacant housing. Overall, housing tenure and natural resource dependence were consistently correlated with building and crop risk. This study advances scientific knowledge by highlighting how specific social vulnerability dimensions relate to flood risks across sectors and geographies.