3. Quantification of Vulnerability

The coastal areas, for now and forthcoming decades, are vulnerable to threats posed by coastal storms, tidal regime, sea level rise, geologic processes, changing global climate and ongoing unprecedented human encroachment. The disastrous Aila event (2009) and associated storm waves, tidal waves and coastal floods are to be remembered by the people of Sagar island for large-scale damaging activities. Hence, assessing the quantification of vulnerability is an indispensable step in disaster risk analysis. But quantification of vulnerability has always been a challenge because of its diverse types and inherent complexities in the connectedness of vulnerability variables with people’s livelihoods and poverty. In Indian context, vulnerability assessment methods vary significantly according to the nature of coastal sector under study. In the present study for mapping coastal vulnerability, a large numbers of physical and socio-economic variables have been used. It emphasizes on five groups that are likely to have least protection against hazard on the basis binomial rules. In  addition to measurement of resilience and capacity in Sagar island, the present study has also analysed  the methodological applications of coastal vulnerability in practice.