Assessment of coastal vulnerability to sea level rise: a case study of the Kenyan coastline
Résumé
Introduction Kenya's 640 km coastline faces escalating exposure to sea-level rise, yet no integrated, spatially explicit assessment combining physical and socioeconomic vulnerability exists for the entire national coastline. This study addresses that gap by developing the first GIS-based Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) at national scale using exclusively open-access data. Methods The shoreline was divided into 7,555 segments of approximately 200 m, each attributed with eight physical indicators (including shoreline change rate, coastal elevation, geomorphology, bathymetry, and sea-level rise trend) and three socioeconomic indicators (population density, land use/land cover, and distance to coastal infrastructure). Indicators were ranked on a 1–5 ordinal scale and weighted using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (CR = 0.046 and 0.033 for physical and socioeconomic sets respectively), then aggregated into a Physical Vulnerability Index (PVI) and Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index (SoVI), each normalised to a 0–100 scale and combined into the final CVI. Results Overall, 31.7% of coastal segments fall in the High or Very High CVI class (mean CVI = 51.66). The most vulnerable stretches are concentrated along the Kilifi–Malindi corridor, where active erosion and sandy geomorphology coincide with elevated socioeconomic exposure, and near the Mombasa urban core. An at-risk inventory of 46 heritage sites, hotel facilities, and biodiversity areas shows that all mapped heritage sites fall in the High or Very High CVI class, with a mean CVI of 74.14. Discussion The elevated socioeconomic vulnerability relative to physical vulnerability underscores the role of human exposure in driving composite coastal risk in Kenya. The open-data framework developed here provides a transferable, replicable baseline for evidence-based coastal adaptation planning in Kenya and comparable data-constrained regions of East Africa.
Citer ce document
Accès au document
Texte intégral en lecture en ligne, réservé aux abonnés SPHAERO et aux membres de l'institution. Se connecter
Voir l'article sur le site de la revueAuteur(s)
Statistiques
Consultations : 1
Téléchargements : 0