Social Vulnerability Models and the Importance of their Reproducibility and Replicibility

It is important to reproduce social vulnerability models because they are an important way in which scientists are responding to environmental hazards. Making sure that these models are good at identifying populations who at-risk could be critical for allocating resources to those in need, or preparing for future hazards. Social vulnerability models, Rufat points out, would benefit from lots of empirical data to ensure that they are best modeling vulnerability. This could be achieved through reproduction or replication.

Additionally, another issue with social vulnerability models, Rufat points out, is the difficulty with construct vailidity of previaling models (Rufat et al, 2019). Although these models may succeed in being replicated or reproduced, their bigger issue is with the way they are selecting indicators and modeling vulnerability.

Given my experience with the Malcomb study, I think it is incredibly important to be able to reproduce and to replicate social vulnerability models. One of Malcomb’s hopes for his study was that his methodology could be replicated in other countries outside of Malwai, where he had conducted his original study. However, in class, we ran into trouble attempting to reproduce parts of his study for a multitude of reasons, some of which included limited access to data or data sources and vague methodology. Specifically, there was a lot of vagueness about how certain maps were made, and also aobut what decisions Malcomb made in order to create his vulnerability model.

In the future, if we are supposed to apply his models and methodolgy to other places, then we want to be sure that his model would be most beneficial for doing so. However, I wonder at his use of indicators. Perhaps the indicators he identiied as most significant and weighted more heavily in his Malawi study are not the most critical indicators for a different country. With this in mind, a clear outline of his decision-making process would then be more useful in informing our own decisions than just a simple model to plug data into.

References Cutter, S. L., Boruff, B. J., & Shirley, W. L. (2003). Social vulnerability to environmental hazards. Social Science Quarterly, 84(2), 242–261. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002

Rufat, S., Tate, E., Emrich, C. T., & Antolini, F. (2019). How Valid Are Social Vulnerability Models? Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109(4), 1131–1153. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1535887 * in the results of this article, focus on the SoVI model validation