Impact Analysis of Anthropogenic Activities on Coastal Vulnerability in Vishakhapatnam City on the Eastern Coast of India Using Remote Sensing

Coastal locations are among the most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change and anthropogenic activities. Vishakhapatnam in India is one of the coastal cities susceptible to climate change’s effects, such as coastal erosion and extreme weather events. Currently, coastal land loss and its correlation with climate change are studied using the coastal vulnerability indices (CVI), primarily driven by physical and geological factors such as coastal features, change rate, sea level rise, coastal exposure, wave height, and tidal range. However, there is a need for multi-dimensional CVI to include more comprehensive parameters in the coastal vulnerability atlases, and better predictions and correlations can be deduced from the vulnerability study. The study aims to identify the shoreline change in Vishakhapatnam City that can be related to anthropogenic activities leading to coastal vulnerability. In the future, the results will be used to determine the multifaceted features driven by climate change, such as extreme weather events. A Google Earth Engine (GEE) application is developed to perform this study. The results show substantial coastal vulnerability.