Evaluation and convergence analysis of socio-economic vulnerability to natural hazards of Belt and Road Initiative countries

Reducing vulnerability and strengthening resilience are vital to achieve the sustainable development goals. Identification of socio-economic vulnerability has been a key step for problem identification and solution framing. Using the official data of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries from year 2000 to year 2015, the Data Envelopment Analysis model was applied to evaluate the socio-economic vulnerability of the countries. Subsequently the convergence characteristics of socio-economic vulnerability between the countries were examined using Theil index method. The results showed that the average socio-economic vulnerability of the BRI countries had a decreasing trend, from 0.319 to 0.141, with fluctuations between 2000 and 2015. The South Asia and East Asia-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were high vulnerability zones as they experienced frequent natural hazards with high population densities. The Theil indices indicated that overall disparities in the BRI countries' vulnerability were high with values around 0.575-0.757and did not show obvious convergence trend, even though the disparities in vulnerability scores of the South Asia and East Asia-ASEAN zones were relatively lower. In addition, intra-group disparities constituted about 71.34% of the total disparities, which were the primary cause of the overall disparity in the BRI region, indicating that different levels of socio-economic vulnerability between countries in the same zone was a concern. Proper management and decision making are proposed, especially in the South Asia and East Asia-ASEAN zones, to reduce socioeconomic vulnerability in order to better resist natural hazards. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.