The Community Human Development Index as a Precision Vulnerability Metric and Risk Indicator
Accurately assessing and measuring population vulnerability across geographic scales is critical for risk management. Currently, the most widely used metric for vulnerability analysis in the United States is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). While the metric has proven its utility in a number of contexts, its structure has inherent limitations that restrict the way it can be used. Here we propose the community Human Development Index (HDI) as a complementary vulnerability metric that can be used to address these gaps. We demonstrate that the HDI correlates well with the SVI at the neighborhood scale, while also capturing different information about the vulnerability of populations. We also show that HDI predicts community health outcomes as well or better than the SVI, with less variation. Through our analyses,we show that the community HDI can be used as a scalable metric for public health and population vulnerability analysis, allowing for richer, more accurate risk assessments across a broader range of communities