Vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying areas at risks to threats and developing strategies to reduce the impact of these threats. A wide array of vulnerability assessment tools is present to assess rivers for different hazards. However, there is no parti More
Vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying areas at risks to threats and developing strategies to reduce the impact of these threats. A wide array of vulnerability assessment tools is present to assess rivers for different hazards. However, there is no particular tool to assess the vulnerability of rivers to changing land-use. There are a few existing assessing frameworks for rivers use top-down approaches which require a large pool of data and highly trained experts. The output of this paper is a new river vulnerability assessment tool (RVAT) that assesses the impacts of changing land-use towards the health and socioeconomic value of the aquatic environment as well as the livelihood of the communities. RVAT comprises a total of 23 criteria, with a conceptual framework and rubrics to assess the river environment, economic and social factors affected by land-use change. This tool was tested and validated in two river systems (Maludam River and Simunjan River) with results showing >0.8 reliability and significant correlation between the criteria. RVAT was able to capture and compare vulnerability in both rivers with minimal data collection efforts. The verbal and visual data needed for the assessment such as types of erosion, water condition and perception on river condition enable the community to assess their rivers thus opening opportunities for the application of citizen science.
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