Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2016) 1-9

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Physics and Chemistry of the Earth

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A new approach for computing a flood vulnerability index using cluster analysis

Paulo Fernandez a, d, *, Sandra Mourato b, d, Madalena Moreira c, d, Luísa Pereira

e, f

a Instituto Polit'ecnico de Castelo Branco, Escola Superior Agra'ria, Portugal

b School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal
c Universidade de E'vora, Escola de Ci^encias e Tecnologia, Portugal
d ICAAM - Instituto de Ci^encias Agra'rias e Ambientais Mediterra^nicas,
Universidade de E'vora, Portugal
e Universidade de Aveiro, Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gesta~o de A'gueda,
Portugal
f Centro de Investigaça~o em Ci^encias Geo-Espaciais, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:
Received 12 February 2015
Received in revised form
1 April 2016
Accepted 5 April 2016
Available online xxx

Keywords: Aggregation methods Cluster analysis

Flood vulnerability index
Principal components analysis
a b s t r a c t

A Flood Vulnerability Index (FloodVI) was developed using Principal Component

Analysis (PCA) and a new aggregation method based on Cluster Analysis (CA). PCA
simplifies a large number of variables into a few uncorrelated factors representing
the social, economic, physical and environmental dimensions of vulnerability. CA
groups areas that have the same characteristics in terms of vulnerability into
vulner- ability classes. The grouping of the areas determines their classification
contrary to other aggregation methods in which the areas' classification determines
their grouping. While other aggregation methods distribute the areas into classes,
in an artificial manner, by imposing a certain probability for an area to
belong to a certain class, as determined by the assumption that the aggregation
measure used is nor- mally distributed, CA does not constrain the distribution of
the areas by the classes.
FloodVI was designed at the neighbourhood level and was applied to the Portuguese
municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia where several flood events have taken place in
the recent past. The FloodVI sensitivity was assessed using three different
aggregation methods: the sum of component scores, the first component score
and the weighted sum of component scores.
The results highlight the sensitivity of the FloodVI to different aggregation
methods. Both sum of component scores and weighted sum of component scores
have shown similar results. The first component score aggregation method
classifies almost all areas as having medium vulnerability and finally the results
obtained using the CA show a distinct differentiation of the vulnerability where
hot spots can be clearly identified.
The information provided by records of previous flood events corroborate the
results obtained with CA, because the inundated areas with greater damages are
those that are identified as high and very high vulnerability areas by CA. This
supports the fact that CA provides a reliable FloodVI.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

From 2001 to 2010, hydrological disasters in Europe (flood and mass movements)
represented the largest share of total disaster victims (55.1%) and millions of
Euros worth of damages (Guha- Sapir et al., 2012). Flood risk assessment
entails understanding vulnerability, which is an important issue at present,
because

* Corresponding author. Instituto Polite'cnico de Castelo Branco, Escola Superior

Agraria, Portugal.
E-mail address: palex@ipcb.pt (P. Fernandez).
climate models project an increase in rainfall intensity in warmer climates (Emori
and Brown, 2005; Groisman et al., 2005; Santos et al., 2015; Trigo and Palutikof,
2001) which will lead to an in- crease in the frequency of flood events
(Balica, 2012). Therefore, vulnerability assessment is of paramount importance as
a tool for population safety and property protection.
In 2007, the Floods Directive (FD) created a Pan-European framework to
support the Member States in evaluating flood risk. The FD is linked to the
Water Framework Directive (WFD) and should produce flood risk maps to help
decision makers and au- thorities take appropriate measures aimed at reducing flood
risk in an effective and sustainable manner (Mostert and Junier, 2009).

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Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
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Furthermore, the development of techniques and assessment methodologies as

well as measures regarding the increase of knowledge about flood vulnerability or
flood risk can be of great value for decision makers and can help
reduce damage and fatalities.
Risk may be defined as the probability that a particular level of loss can be
sustained by a given series of elements as a result of a given level of hazard
impact (Alexander, 2000). The exposed ele- ments in flood risk are
population, communities, buildings and infrastructures as well as economic
activities and the natural environment, that are under threat in a given area.
Vulnerability is embedded into the concept of risk, as Risk = Hazard
x Vulnerability (Wisner et al., 2004) and is under- stood as “The characteristics
and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the
damaging effects of a hazard” (UNISDR, 2009). The existing literature establishes
several definitions and conceptual frameworks of vulnerability were established,
according to the researchers' views. These can be summarized in three
classes (Adger, 2006; Fekete, 2009b; Tate,
2011): i) exposure to a natural event, risk stressor or shock; ii)
sensitivity, also described as susceptibility or resistance; and iii) adaptative
capacity, also expressed as recovery potential or resilience.
There are usually four dimensions that need to be considered in vulnerability
assessment: i) the physical dimension that represents the potential of physical
impact on the built environment; ii) the economic dimension that accounts for
the potential impacts of hazards on economic assets; iii) the social dimension
that is related to the presence of human beings, individuals or communities, and
their capacity to cope, resist and recover from hazard impacts; and iv) the
environmental dimension that refers to potential impacts on the natural environment
and the ability of ecosystems to cope and recover from hazard impacts.
The complex structure of a vulnerability assessment framework is described as a
hierarchical model, a deductive model, or an inductive model (Tate, 2012) and
aggregate vulnerability indices are computed using the mathematics of index
construction (Schmidtlein et al., 2008). Inductive methods were popularized by the
Social Vulnerability Index (Cutter et al., 2003) and are used by
the majority of the more recent vulnerability indices (Fekete,
2009b; Schmidtlein et al., 2011; Tate, 2012).
The main criticisms regarding indices construction methods are the subjective
process of both variable selection and weighting, unavailability of certain
variables, problems related to aggregation at different scales, and difficulties in
validating the results (Barnett et al., 2008; Fekete, 2012; Jones and Andrey,
2007). Furthermore, different combinations of the variables may produce diverse
vulnerability assessments (Chakraborty et al., 2005; Koks et al.,
2015). Nevertheless, the usefulness of indicators aimed at reducing
complexity, measuring progress, and establishing prior- ities makes them an
important tool for decision makers.
Jones and Andrey (2007) have argued that Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
offers an alternative to the otherwise subjective variable selection by
objectively simplifying a large number of variables into a few uncorrelated
factors that capture the variability in the underlying data (Abdi and
Williams, 2010). The PCA approach increases flexibility regarding the choice
and number of variables, thereby allowing for a more robust and consistent set of
variables (Cutter et al., 2003) and provides several potential ad- vantages with
regard to aggregation of spatially explicit and potentially incommensurable
variables (Abson et al., 2012).
PCA is labelled as an inductive method and has been used by the majority of the
more recent vulnerability indices studies (Borden et al., 2007; Cutter et al.,
2003; Fekete, 2009a; Finch et al., 2010; Rygel et al., 2006; Schmidtlein et al.,
2011; Tate et al., 2010). The vulnerability index is built as a function of
principal components (PC) and their subsequent aggregation. Aggregation of PC
refers to the procedure used to combine transformed, normalized, and weighted
indicators into a simpler measure, reducing the amount and complexity of
information that must be used during the pro- cess of classifying the areas into
vulnerability classes (Nguyen et al.,
2016). It should be emphasized that the existing aggregation methods do not
guarantee that those areas have similar charac- teristics in terms of the
variables of interest's values and thus of vulnerability. Furthermore, and as
stated before, the choice of the aggregation method conditions the results, making
the aggregation of the PC a subjective decision in the index construction process
(Bo€hringer and Jochem, 2007).
Fig. 1. Study area location.

Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
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3

Commonly applied aggregation methods use addition and/or multiplication of

components. The aggregation based on the addition of components using equal
weights is used comprehen- sively (Tate, 2012). In some recent
vulnerability assessments, eigenvector techniques similar to PCA have been used as
robust estimators of objective weights (Pacheco and Sanches Fernandes,
2013) and proven to be the most efficient among common weighting
techniques (Pacheco et al., 2015).
Cluster analysis (CA) appears as a serious alternative to these aggregation
methods. Although various studies, in distinct areas other than flood risk
assessment, have used CA to aggregate different regions by their
characteristics (Lee et al., 2016; Mourato et al., 2010; Santos et al., 2014), a
formal methodology to aggre- gate principal components of similar neighbourhoods
into the same group and to perform their classification in a straightforward manner
is missing in the literature.
The partitional K-means clustering algorithm is a non- hierarchical
clustering technique which attempts to find k non- overlapping clusters, by
moving objects from cluster to cluster, with the goal of minimizing the
within-cluster variance and maximizing the between-cluster variance (Jain and
Dubes, 1988). As a first step, k initial centroids are selected, where k is specified
by the user and indicates the desired number of clusters and then, each additional
iteration groups the observations, based on the nearest Euclidean distance to the
centre of the cluster. The centroid of each cluster is then updated based on the
points assigned to the cluster. The process continues until cluster centres do
not shift more than a given cut-off value (Wu, 2012). By using CA, the areas with
similar characteristics, in terms of the variables of interest's values, are
gathered together. This is exactly what the other ag- gregation methods lack.
In addition to the development of a new aggregation method, we propose a
vulnerability assessment addressing the physical, economic, social, and
environmental dimensions, whereas the majority of studies use only the social
dimension in a particular area: United States (Cutter et al., 2003, 2013),
United Kingdom (Tapsell et al., 2002), Austria (Kienberger et al., 2009),
Germany (Fekete, 2009b), Norway (Holand and Lujala, 2013), Romania (Armas
and Gavris, 2013), China (Zhou et al., 2014), and Israel (Felsenstein and
Lichter, 2014). Therefore, the main differences between this study and the
previous ones on vulnerability assess- ment are: the development and
implementation of a new aggre- gation method based on CA, which is objective,
groups neighbourhoods with similar characteristics into the same vulner- ability
class, incorporates a greater number of dimensions into the assessment, and
contains more detail terms of the in spatial scale (neighbourhood level).
Thus, the main objective of this paper is to provide an auto- mated framework
for classifying vulnerability of neighbourhoods. To achieve this objective, PCA
and CA are used. PCA transforms a 15 dimensional space into a 4 dimensional one
and determines scores for each PC. This makes it possible to create and use a
modified 4 dimensional space of the PC (by scores). CA groups neighbourhoods with
similar characteristics into 5 vulnerability classes. The index is applied to the
Vila Nova de Gaia municipality.
Although the input parameters of the Flood Vulnerability Index (FloodVI) were
selected according to the special focus of floods in Portugal, they are not
directly dependent on flood related infor- mation. Therefore, this index can be
applied to identify, quantify and rank flood vulnerability not only in the
study area but also in any potential flood area.
The paper outline is as follows: Section 1 introduces the back- ground and the aim
of the study. Section 2 presents the study area and describes the vulnerability
assessment approach and the sensitivity analysis of the vulnerability index.
The results are
presented and discussed in Section 3 and finally some conclusions are presented in
Section 4.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Study site and data

Flood vulnerability is assessed for the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia (Fig.
1), situated in Northern Portugal, where several floods have occurred (Branda~o et
al., 2014; Ze^zere et al., 2014). According to the DISASTER Project (Ze^zere et
al., 2014), any flood event is stored in the database if it led to casualties
or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independent of the
number of people affected. Between 1865 and 2010, 57 floods were reported in Vila
Nova de Gaia municipality, accounting for a total of four deaths, as well as
evacuation of 123 and displacement of 2930. The mu- nicipality ranks as the
fourth in Portuguese ranking of flood di- sasters. Between 1999 and 2009, 1275
flood events were reported by the national civil protection service.
The municipality has an area of 168.46 km2 and is divided into
24 civil parishes and 3076 neighbourhoods. It is the third most populous
municipality in Portugal, with 302,295 inhabitants in
2011, approximately 180,000 of which are urban residents. From
2001 to 2011 the number of residents has increased by approxi- mately 15,000.
The population density is about 1795 inhabitants per km2 and the building density
is about 386 buildings per km2.
The predominant land uses are urban (43%) and forest (39%).
In this study two data sets were used: the Geographic Infor- mation of Portuguese
Statistics (2011 Census) provided by the National Statistics Institute and the
land use maps for 1990 and
2007 provided by the Portuguese Geographic Institute. The 2011
Census data are geo-referenced information based on small terri- torial units.
The neighbourhood is the territorial unit which iden- tifies the smallest
homogenous area, whether built-up or not, that exists in the statistical section.
It represents a block in urban areas.

2.2. Variable selection

A vulnerability study has to take into account several variables within an area
such as: age, gender, race, ethnicity, social class, unemployment rate, immigrant
status, density and quality of the built environment, land use, housing tenancy
and presence of informal support networks (Borden et al., 2007; Burton and
Cutter,
2008; Cutter et al., 2003; Cutter et al., 2000; Fekete, 2009a; Finch et al., 2010;
Lein and Abel, 2010; Masozera et al., 2007; Rygel et al., 2006; Schmidtlein et
al., 2011; Schneiderbauer and Ehrlich,
2006; Simpson and Katirai, 2006; Tapsell et al., 2002; Wisner et al., 2004).
The variables for the social, economic and physical dimensions were derived from
the information available in the 2011 Census at the neighbourhood level.
Additionally, environmental variables were added from the land use data. The
criteria for variable se- lection were taken from the literature and are
presented in Table 1.

2.3. Flood vulnerability index design

PCA reduces the number of variables and determines some components that summarise
different vulnerability characteristics. The proposed FloodVI is estimated
according to the following steps, as illustrated in Fig. 2:

1) Standardization of input variables to z-scores.

2) Calculation of the PCA with the standardized input variables.
The starting point for all factor analysis is the collinearity

Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
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Table 1
Considerations for variable selection. Variables
Considerations
Building density In urban areas with high population density, the rescue
process is often rather complicated. In some cases, high population density is
related to a
relative number of lower income families (Masozera et al., 2007). Buildings'
density is a factor which influences vulnerability in inundated areas because of
potential increase of building's exposure to flooding (Cardona, 2005; Tapsell et
al., 2002).
Number of floors The upper floors of buildings may be used to protect people
and their belongings (Schneiderbauer, 2007).
Construction period The more recent building constructions are based on structure
safety regulations. Therefore, these buildings are often more resistant. Older
neighbourhoods also have older sewage systems which may be more susceptible to
flooding (Simonovic et al., 2007).
Building structure The main floor and wall construction materials determine
the building's physical fragility to a flood event and indicate resistance to
damage, as well as the social status of the residents (Müller et al., 2011;
Schneiderbauer, 2007).
Housing occupancy Landlords are more likely to pursue construction changes in
their buildings and to have insurance or increase their insurance coverage than
tenants (Tapsell et al., 2002). People that rent a house usually do not have the
financial resources for home ownership and often do not have access to information
about financial support during recovery (Cutter et al., 2003; Fekete, 2009a).
Gender Women have a higher perception of risk and are better
prepared for action (Fekete, 2009a). However, women can have more difficulty during
recovery, often due to lower income and greater family care responsibilities
(Cutter et al., 2003; Fekete, 2009a; Hewitt, 1997).
Education level The level of education and illiteracy rate are clear
factors of socioeconomic vulnerability, because there is a direct relationship
between these and economic capacity, social status and job opportunities (Cutter et
al., 2003; Fekete, 2009a).
Age The elderly have limited mobility and
physical difficulties in evacuations. They are more reluctant to leave their homes,
have health-related problems and longer recovery time (Rygel et al., 2006). The
very young also have high physical fragility and dependency (Cutter et al., 2003;
Fekete,
2009a; Hewitt, 1997; Kuhlicke et al., 2011).
Unemployment The unemployed comprise a special group that is more
dependent on other family members and on the government (Fekete, 2009a). The
unemployed potentially have lower financial assets, so their houses are of lower
quality and are most probably not insured (Balica, 2012).
Household composition

Economic activity sector

Larger families often have to share their income and have more dependents such as
children and elderly to evacuate (Fekete, 2009a). Frequently, they have limited
financial resources to outsource care for dependents and difficulties in reconciling
work responsibilities with care for family members (Cutter et al., 2003; Fekete,
2009a; Hewitt, 1997).
The services sector is an expression of areas with high economic development
areas. (Cutter et al., 2009).
Land use In agricultural areas there are also economic losses
resulting from temporary inundation of crops, which can be frequent due to the
increase in extreme events resulting from climatic changes (Morris and Brewin,
2013). Damages are lower in inundated forest areas. Some species are flood tolerant
(survived more than 150 days), and others can withstand up to 50 days of flooding
(Whitlow and Harris, 1979). Floods in urban areas encumber emergency management and
result in large economic losses, because the temporary water coverage affects
economic activities and a large number of people (Balica, 2012).
Urban growth Rapid urban growth combined with wrong planning policies
may result in poor quality housing which makes residents more vulnerable. Urban
land
use increases impervious areas and hence runoff (Balica and Wright, 2010).

analysis and the elimination of redundant data. This procedure measures if the
correlations are appropriate to carry out PCA.
3) Analysis of PCA output results. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test (KMO) measures
the sampling adequacy and shows the extent to which the data fits factor analysis,
thus determining the level of confidence that can be expected when using factor
analysis (Hair et al., 2009). KMO values above 0.6 indicate an acceptable
normalized PC using the Euclidean distance measure. The K- means is a
partition clustering approach by which each point is assigned to the cluster with
the closest centre, with a pre-defined number of clusters. The K-means algorithm
aims at minimizing an objective function (equation (1)), in this case a
squared error function.
level and above 0.8 a good compatibility level of variables
J = X
Xn Ixðj) I2

(Hutcheson and Sofroniou, 1999). Those components whose eigenvalues are greater
than one are selected (Kaiser, 1960).
j=1
i=1I i - cjI
(1)
Communalities measure the extent to which the variance of the
where k is the number of clusters, n is the number of cases and
I j) I2
original variables is accounted for by the observed components.
Ixð I
I i - cjI
is a distance function between case i and the centre of
The communalities values should all be greater than 0.5.
4) Analysis of variance explained. The number of components needed in order
to account for a pre-specified amount of orig- inal data variation should be
retained. The smallest number of components is chosen such that at least 80% of
the original data variation is explained.
5) Rotation of the initial PCA solution using the Varimax rotation.
This is a popular orthogonal factor rotation method and the factors are
extracted so that their axes are maintained at 90o. This generally simplifies
the relationships among the variables and clarifies the interpretation of the
factors.
6) Calculation of the component scores for each neighbourhood.
The component score is a composite measure created for each observation of each
extracted factor in the factor analysis. The component scores are standardized to
a z-score.
7) Aggregation method, assigning a vulnerability class to each neighbourhood.

The novel aggregation method proposed here is based on CA, which is regarded as
the most practical method of establishing
regions with similar characteristics from large data sets (Hosking
cluster j (cj) (Jain and Dubes, 1988).
The cluster centre is defined as a parameter set that has the minimum average
Euclidean distance to each of the members in the cluster. This distance is
weighted by the explained variance obtained for the PC. In this way, the
dimensions that are considered more important will have more impact on the
clustering process. The number of clusters used in clustering is five according
to the five vulnerability classes (very low, low, medium, high, and very high).
Each cluster is then characterized by a value, to reduce the 4 dimensional
space to one dimension, during the classification process. This value is the
mean value of the coordinates of the cluster centre. The cluster with the
smallest value will be classified as being the least vulnerable and the one with
the highest value as he most vulnerable.
To assess FloodVI sensitivity three other aggregation methods are considered:
Sum of components (Aggregation 1): this is a simple approach that adds the
component scores (CS), assigning equal weight to each component of the index
(equation (2)).

and Wallis, 1997). A K-means clustering method is applied to the

Aggregation 1 X
i=1
CSi
(2)

Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
computing a flood vulnerability index using cluster analysis, Physics and
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Fig. 2. FloodVI construction flowchart.

First component (Aggregation 2): the first extracted compo- nent is the linear
combination of variables that explain the largest amount of variation in the
original data. Therefore, selecting only the first component (CS1) will give
the mathematically optimal value that summarizes all the input variables in a
single combina- tion (equation (3)).

Aggregation 2 = CS1
(3)
Weighted sum of components (Aggregation 3): This is a compromise between
the first two methods, where each compo- nent's weight (vi) is the proportion
between the explainable vari- ance and the total variation (equation (4)).

n
Aggregation 3 v CS
(4)
i=1

For each aggregation method the resulting score is standardized

Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
computing a flood vulnerability index using cluster analysis, Physics and
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to z-scores. These z-score values are then used to classify the cor- responding
neighbourhood into a vulnerability class. These classes correspond to an interval
of dimensions that is determined by the standard deviation of the z-score values
(that has a value of 1 since the z-scores are normalized). Hence, the
corresponding neigh- bourhoods are classified respectively as having very high
vulnera- bility for z-score values > 1.5, high vulnerability for 1.5 < z-score
values <0.5, medium vulnerability for -0.5 <z-score values < 0.5, low
vulnerability for -1.5 < z-score values < -0.5, and finally very low vulnerability
for z-score values < -1.5. Selection of these values is supported by the existing
literature (Cutter et al., 2003; Dunning and Durden, 2013; Schmidtlein et al.,
2008) and assumes that the z- scores have a normal distribution. In this way, and
considering the
5 vulnerability classes, the probability of having a neighbourhood with medium
vulnerability class is 38.292% against 24.173% for the low and high
vulnerability classes and 6.681% for the other two classes. This form of
classification forces the neighbourhoods to pertain to a certain class, depending
on the thresholds used. On the contrary, and being more accurate, CA does not
impose any kind of constraint on the distribution of the areas to be
classified. Henceforth, cluster aggregation method will be referred to as Ag-
gregation 4.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Component scores

After PCA, a KMO test value of 0.882 was achieved, which can be considered good.
The relationship between the selected variables can be described by 4
components which explain 86.1% of the variance. The first component explains
44.4% of the variance and can be related to the social and economic dimensions of
vulnera- bility. It includes the following variables: male inhabitants; female
inhabitants; age; unemployment; education level; economic ac- tivity sector;
housing occupancy and household composition. The second component that explains
24.0% of the variance addresses building features and includes: building density;
number of floors; construction period and building structure. The third and fourth
components include the environmental dimension where compo- nent three (which
explains 11.2%) is related to the urban aspects: urban land use and urban land
use change (1990 and 2007) and component four (which explains 6.5%) comprises the
rural vari- ables: agricultural land use and forest land use.
The rotated component matrix (Table 2) shows the variable

Table 2
Variable loads in the rotated component matrix. Variables
Components
1 2 3 4

Gender 0.957 0.271 -0.019

0.001
Age 0.899 0.380
-0.017 0.011
Unemployment 0.878 0.277 -0.030
-0.012
Education level 0.741 0.530 -0.060
0.007
Economic activity sector 0.961 0.091 0.17
-0.001
Housing occupancy 0.944 0.137 0.004
0.001
Household composition 0.956 0.250 -0.002
0.004
Building density 0.393 0.899 -0.043
0.027
Number of floors 0.214 0.946 -0.072
0.042
Construction period 0.166 0.836 0.002
0.046
Building structure 0.412 0.821 -0.030
0.011
Urban land use -0.058 -0.071 0.906
-0.043
Urban growth -0.007 -0.012 0.672
-0.157
Agriculture land use -0.046 0.092 -0.355
0.787
Forestry land use -0.066 0.002 -0.615
0.624

The bold values correspond to variables load on which components.

loads of the four components after Varimax rotation. This pro- vides a clear
depiction of the four PC and the variables that form it.

3.2. Flood vulnerability assessment

The four aggregation methods were applied (2.3) to compute the FloodVI. The
first three aggregation methods consider that among the 3076 neighbourhoods, 205
have very low vulnerability,
744 have low vulnerability, 1178 have medium vulnerability, 744 have high
vulnerability and 205 have very high vulnerability. Noteworthy is the
artificial distribution of the number of neigh- bourhoods per class due to the
classification procedure. Indeed, the commonly used thresholds (2.3) force, for
example, the medium vulnerability class to have a greater number of
neighbourhoods. The method using CA provides the following results: 1354 neigh-
bourhoods have very low vulnerability, 369 have low vulnerability,
215 have medium vulnerability, 861 have high vulnerability and
277 have very high vulnerability. The spatial distribution of these classified
neighbourhoods per aggregation method is illustrated in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3 shows that the spatial distribution of the 5 vulnerability classes produced
by the aggregations methods 1 and 2 are very different, especially in the
southeast part of the municipality. This indicates that it is important to also
take into account components two, three and four, which represent 41.7% of the
variance of the variables involved. Fig. 3 also shows that the results produced
with aggregation method 3 are very similar with those produced with method 1 since
the aggregation measures used by both methods are very similar. As the first
component is valued more in aggre- gation method 3 than in method 1, the
results obtained with methods 3 and 2 are less dissimilar than those obtained
with methods 1 and 2, with most of dissimilarities also located in southeast
part of the municipality. The major differences are be- tween the results of
aggregation methods 1, 2 and 3 and those of method 4, where there is a
predominance of areas with high vulnerability.
Correlation of the results produced by the four different aggre- gation methods
confirms the aforesaid (Table 3).
Analysing the percentage of the areas classified according to each aggregation
method (Fig. 4a) it can be concluded that both aggregation methods 1 and 3
present similar results. According to aggregation method 2, 52.5% of the area is
classified as having medium vulnerability, which strongly disagrees with the
7.1% (lowest percentage) obtained by aggregation method 4, which classifies
45.6% of the areas as having high vulnerability.
Although we have endorsed 5 vulnerability classes, the sensi- tivity analysis is
more straightforward if we combine Low and Very low vulnerability classes into one
single class. The same is true for the High and Very high vulnerability classes
(Fig. 4b). From Fig. 4b one can conclude that both aggregation methods 1 and 3
provide similar results, although the latter is sounder, from the conceptual point
of view. Considering aggregation method 2, the medium and low vulnerability
classes still have the highest percentage of area, which can be considered
conservative since the physical and the environmental dimensions are not
accounted for. Aggregation method 4 now classifies 92.9% of the area as having
high and low vulnerability.
Intersecting the results obtained with the four aggregation methods, it is
noted that 36 neighbourhoods maintain their clas- sification as high or very high,
none keep the medium vulnerability classification and 49 neighbourhoods maintain
their classification of low or very low vulnerability. Aggregation methods 1, 2
and 3 have been used and divulged in the literature and no attention has been paid
to their somewhat discordant results.

Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
computing a flood vulnerability index using cluster analysis, Physics and
Chemistry of the Earth (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2016.04.003
P. Fernandez et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2016) 1-9
7

Fig. 3. Flood vulnerability index at Vila Nova de Gaia municipality according

to different aggregation methods.

4. Conclusions

Table 3
Correlation values between aggregation methods. Aggregation
Aggregation
1 2 3 4

1 1 - -
-
2 0.46 1
- -
3 0.79 0.74 1
-
4 -0.19 0.19
0.07 1
The developed and implemented FloodVI describes how social and economic
characteristics of the population, building features and environmental issues
behave in terms of resistance and resil- ience to flood impact. This study
integrates mathematical analysis (PCA and CA) and Geographic Information System
(GIS) techniques to estimate several vulnerability dimensions. It is also a
contribu- tion to flood risk assessment.
FloodVI was been proven to be aggregation model sensitive with both sum of
components and weighted sum of components
Please cite this article in press as: Fernandez, P., et al., A new approach for
computing a flood vulnerability index using cluster analysis, Physics and
Chemistry of the Earth (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2016.04.003
8
P. Fernandez et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2016) 1-9

Fig. 4. Percentage of area for each vulnerability classes according to the four
different aggregation methods: a) five classes b) three classes.

aggregation methods showing similar results. The percentage values of the

areas classified as having low, medium and high vulnerability are almost equal.
The first component aggregation method gives conservative results classifying
the majority of the areas as having medium and low vulnerability, and the CA
aggre- gation method provides completely different results that present the
majority of the areas as having high and low vulnerability. Considering that it
is not possible to completely validate which aggregation method is the most
accurate, and bearing in mind that methods involving the addition of components are
very similar, the novel approach suggested here has several advantages: i) mathe-
matical background supporting the ability to bring together similar areas; ii)
providing the decision maker with an option, since the results clearly classify
the neighbourhoods in high or low vulner- ability; and iii) not imposing an
artificial distribution of neigh- bourhoods per class of vulnerability. In
addition, it is possible to state that CA produces a reliable FloodVI since
overlaying of inun- dated areas, where damages are recorded to have occurred in
previous flood events, are in strong agreement with high and very high
vulnerability areas as classified by the proposed FloodVI.
The potential presented by FloodVI to clearly identify an area as belonging to an
extreme class of vulnerability is an important asset for decision makers. This
index makes it possible to easily detect the hot spots, and improves
interventions in the more vulnerable areas. Thus FloodVI is a potentially
powerful tool because it sum- marizes complexity, provides quantitative
metrics to compare places and track progress, and it is relatively easy for non-
experts to interpret.

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