The Community Census and Spatial Visualization Index (CCSVI)

TL;DR

The paper introduces CCSVI, a web-based geospatial platform that combines climate hazard and social vulnerability data in Hawai'i to aid decision-making and community resilience.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated visualization system that links climate hazards with social data, addressing disjointed datasets and enhancing user interactivity.

Findings

Enables exploration of climate risk and social vulnerability correlations.

Facilitates identification of at-risk populations for better disaster preparedness.

Provides an accessible tool for community and decision-maker engagement.

Abstract

Climate hazards in Hawai'i are increasing in both frequency and severity, with varying impacts over vulnerable communities. This paper presents the Community Census and Spatial Visualization Index (CCSVI), a web-based geospatial visualization platform that integrates climate hazard data with socioeconomic and infrastructural datasets. This system enables users to explore the correlation between environmental risks and social vulnerability through interactive mapping and layered data visualizations. Social vulnerability and climate hazard data are commonly collected individually, this causes the data to be disjointed making it difficult to combine and analyze directly. With data being unrelated when collected, finding direct comparisons and combining the data is difficult resulting in many non-expert users to not understand the data. Additionally, many existing tools focus on only one of these types of data, limiting their interactivity and failing to make any improvements. CCSVI aims to handle the lack of accessible, unified, and interactive systems analyzing the relationship between climate hazards and social vulnerabilities across the state of Hawai'i. This support favors assisting decision-makers, researchers, and community members in identifying at-risk populations, improving disaster preparedness, and creating informed climate adaptation strategies.