Track: Environmental Engineering

Abstract

The conduct of vulnerability assessments has helped help many governments and local communities to mitigate hazards brought by natural disasters. This study focuses on the barangay level vulnerability assessment on the Municipality of Boac, the capital of Marinduque province in the Philippines. The province, being an island, is susceptible to various hydrometeorological hazards. The assessment was made to compute the vulnerability index of each barangay in the municipality. The indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and resilience were identified through various consultations and focus group discussions with the constituents, the local government units, and government agencies assigned on disaster management while the data of each indicator were lifted from the 2015 Community Based Monitoring Systems (CBMS).Using the method of equal weights, the computed indices indicate that about 73.77% of the barangays have moderate vulnerability while the remaining 26.23% were categorized as low vulnerability. Using regression analysis, the indicators that are significant to the barangay’s vulnerability were also identified. These indicators include landslide exposure, no. of households with members who are pregnant/lactating, and no. of households with members who have experience or training on emergency response. The study also proved that increasing resiliency is an important factor to decrease the community’s vulnerability. This can be done by proper risk assessment, establishing clear evacuation protocols before and during disasters, and educating the vulnerable communities through proper information dissemination.