Assessing Catchment Vulnerability of Community-Based Small Businesses to Coastal Hazards: Spatial and Sectoral Disparities

Climatic changes pose significant risks to the demand stability of coastal community-based small businesses (CSBs) due to the inherent vulnerability of their catchment areas. Given such threats, it is imperative for urban and regional spatial planning to incorporate CSB adaptation with a thorough assessment of their vulnerabilities. However, the extant assessments of CSB vulnerabilities have focused on internal business patterns, lacking a quantitative understanding of catchment vulnerabilities that affected customer visitations. We thus quantify CSB vulnerability by assessing the social and spatial characteristics of catchment areas through an access-based, data-driven approach using the CSB-Catchment Vulnerability Index (CCVI). The CCVI integrates indicators of social vulnerability and predicted hazard exposure to holistically evaluate CSB catchment vulnerability to flood disturbances. Our analysis across Florida’s 17 coastal metropolitan areas reveals notable disparities in catchment vulnerability, highlighting the “coastal fringe trap”—a pattern where CSBs on coastal fringes have more socially vulnerable catchments than those near the coast. We also identify significant vulnerabilities in CSBs across three sectoral groups—tourism-related, essential retail, and social services—each differing in their exposure to hazards, social vulnerability, and combined risks. The findings inform local and regional spatial adaptation planning to enhance the economic resilience of CSBs in coastal areas. The data-driven CCVI framework also offers a versatile tool for assessing catchment vulnerabilities of other social infrastructures that serve at-risk populations.