A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Framework: A Spatial Approach

Abstract: Climate change is affecting every known society, especially for small farmers in Low-Income Countries because they depend heavily on rain, seasonality patterns, and known temperature ranges. To build climate change resilient communities among rural farmers, the first step is to understand the impact of climate change on the population. This paper proposes a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Framework (CCVAF) to assess climate change vulnerabilities among rural farmers. The CCVAF framework uses information and communication technology (ICT) to assess climate change vulnerabilities among rural farmers by integrating both community level and individual household level indicators. The CCVAF was instantiated into a GIS-based web application named THRIVE for different decision-makers to better assess how climate change is affecting rural farmers in Western Honduras. Qualitative evaluation of the THRIVE showed that it is an innovative and useful tool. The CCVAF contributes to not only the knowledge base of the climate change vulnerability assessment but also the design science literature by providing guidelines to design a class of climate change vulnerability assessment solutions.