Towards the sustainable climate change population movement: the Relocation Suitability Index

The accelerated climate change impacts may become a significant direct or indirect push factor of population displacement and migration from the vulnerability hotspots. If left to unfold organically without any management and assistance, this movement may result in resettlement to host destinations at high-risk to different hazards and/or insufficient absorption capacity. A timely dialogue on relocation as well as on strategic efforts to align the needs and dimensions of sending and receiving locations will be vital to ensure that the host communities do not exceed their carrying capacities to sustain the projected influx of people. Consequently, this paper presents the Relocation Suitability Index, a decision-support tool developed to assist in exploration of alternative host locations and their ability to assimilate the relocatees with different socio-economic and cultural needs. The said platform is user-driven and allows for active participation of stakeholders in the relocation planning process via management of variables and their weighted values indicating absorption capacities of host destinations. The proposed tabular framework supports integration of complex considerations at different spatial and temporal scales to generate the aggregate score for each alternative location. As such, it supports their comparison, ranking, and consequent dialogue on regionally sustainable distribution of relocation flows.