Scholarly record
A METHOD OF ASSESSING THE SENSITIVITY OF THE COASTAL RISK VARIABLES TO COMPUTE THE COASTAL VULNERABILITY INDEX
Abstract
The Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) has proved to be a valuable tool for evaluating the potential for coastal change in a given area. The CVI ranks the following variables in terms of their physical contribution to sea level-related coastal change: geomorphology, regional coastal slope, rate of relative sea-level change, the rate of historical shoreline change, mean tidal range and mean significant wave height. They are termed coastal risk variables and the rankings for each variable are combined and an index value is calculated, such that the CVI highlights those regions where the physical effects of sea-level change might be the greatest. The purpose of the present study is to propose a method which can assess the sensitivity of each risk variable since each of them influences the CVI computation with a different weight. The total combinations of the six risk variables are 15,625 but 140 of them are different because all the rest compute the same CVI value. Minimum and maximum values are then corresponded to 0\% and 100\% respectively and all in-between values correspond to certain percentages. Having taken the percentages for all 140 combinations, the risk variables can be ranked according to their influence (sensitivity). This is very important because this ranking is the way with which weights can be introduced in computing the CVI, otherwise all risk variables contribute equally and this can lead to serious miscomputations and errors.
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