A study on methods for the vulnerability index to support the formulation of regional adaptation measures for climate crisis

The recent global climate crisis, including on the Korean Peninsula, is worsening every year, seriously affecting all sectors, including human beings, ecosystems, agriculture, livestock, marine, and fisheries. To reduce vulnerability to the climate crisis and enhance adaptive capacity and resilience to natural disaster damage, national and local governments are establishing adaptation measures every five years. While VESTAP is utilized for regional vulnerability assessments, it has limitations as the relative nature of its results makes them difficult to use and compare across assessment items; however, some prior studies have proposed a grading system to reduce the complexity of assessment indicators. The purpose of this study is to propose a method for grding VESTAP’s relative vulnerability assessment results and to analyze the correlation between graded outcomes and its component indices (climate exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity), thereby formulation of regional adaptation measures for climate crisis. The study compared a total of three grading methods: equal-interval grading, utilizing Natural Breaks (Jenks), and utilizing the Quantile method. The correlation analysis showed that the equal-interval grading method yielded statistically significant results. The other methods also produced meaningful results, suggesting areas for future improvements to VESTAP. It is expected that local governments can utilize the results of this study to propose a method of converting VESTAP's relative vulnerability assessments into an equal-interval graded system, which can serve as foundational data for understanding the actual degree of regional vulnerability.