Step-by-Step Guide to Vulnerability Hotspots Mapping: Implementing the Spatial Index Approach (ArcGIS and R)
Authors: Malanding S Jaiteh, Tricia Chai-Onn, Valentina Mara, Alex de Sherbinin
This manual was designed for a five-day training program in Entebbe, Uganda, in August 2015. CIESIN provided a comprehensive training in the framework, data and methods utilized to develop a spatial vulnerability assessment for Kenya using the spatial index approach. Data sets and potential indicators to be derived from them were assembled and evaluated in advance of the workshop. The workshop’s primary focus was on the methods needed to process and transform the spatial data in order to develop a spatial vulnerability index (and constituent indices for exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity). The workshop was intended for GIS analysts who regularly use ArcGIS 9.x or later versions, who are broadly familiar with a variety of geospatial data formats, and who have the ability to do advanced geospatial processing (e.g., editing data sets, creating buffers, conducting overlay analyses, running zonal statistics, etc.). While vulnerability index maps can be produced entirely in ArcGIS environment, we use R statistical computing and graphics software for the component of part in this training. R is a free software with a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques that have proven to be very efficient in handling large data sets as the one we encounter in spatial vulnerability index mapping. The workshop was divided into the following modules, which are addressed in greater detail in the lectures and exercises that follow.
