Drivers of Social Vulnerability to Flooding in an Urban Context: A Case Study of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area

Faustina Frempong-Ainguah , Regional Institute for Population Studies/University of Ghana
Mumuni Abu, University of Ghana
Benjamin Dovie

Climate-related hazards will continue to pose problems to populations living in urban areas due to increasing urbanisation and poor planning. Vulnerability to climatic hazards have been addressed in most disciplines from the physical exposure perspective; where issues associated with losses and physical damages caused to property and livelihood have gained attention in the population and environment discourse. There are however, other non-physical indicators such as place attachments and people’s values that are affected by disasters that are excluded from the vulnerability analysis. Using a cross-sectional data from the 2017 Cities and Climate Change project conducted at RIPS, University of Ghana and 2010 Ghana Population and Housing Census, we examined the drivers of social vulnerability in an urban context to understand non-physical drivers of vulnerability for building resilience in urban communities. Our findings show the role of social indicators in helping build resilience to flooding in the Greater Accra region.

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 Presented in Session 106. Empirical Assessments of Linked Human-Ecological Adaptive Responses to Climate Change