Data and Code for "Census to sense: Decoding spatio-temporal dynamics of social vulnerability to disasters in Nepal"

This repository consists of code, research data, and outputs of the following study, which assesses the spatiotemporal dynamics of social vulnerability to disasters in Nepal using municipality-level census data from 2011 and 2021. 

"Census to sense: Decoding spatio-temporal dynamics of social vulnerability to disasters in Nepal". Anup Shrestha, Josias Láng-Ritter, Dipesh Chapagain, Maija Taka, Olli Varis. To appear in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2026.

Repository contents:

Data:

The excel files (2011_indicators.xlsx and 2021_indicators.xlsx) contain the indicator datasets used as input for the PCA for 2011 and 2021.

Code:

1. PCA.ipynb - performs Principal Component Ananlysis (PCA) using both: A) a joint approach (2011 and 2021 combined), and B) Year-wise approach for 2011 and 2021 separately
2. Indices.ipynb - calculates Social Vulnerability Index (SOVI) and its component indices (Sensitivity and Adaptive Capacity) for both the joint and year-wise approaches. 
3. Indices_change.ipynb - calculates the change in SOVI, sensitivity, and adaptive Capacity between 2011 and 2021 and categorise the shifts in vulnerability components to three vulnerability transition pathways as presented in the results of the article.
4. Aggregated_indices.ipynb - calculates the population-weighted indices for SOVI, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity at provincial and national scale. 

Output: 

The resulting indices (2011_indices.xlsx and 2021_indices.xlsx) are in the excel format for 2011 and 2021.

Shapefile: 

The shapefile of the Nepal according to new administrative units is in the zip file (nepal_admin.zip).

Note for plotting:

Some municipalities in Nepal share the same name but are located in different districts. To avoid ambiguity and ensure correct matching between the index outputs and the spatial data, we created a unique identifier by combining the district and municipality names.

For example, the municipality Aatharai Gaunpalika in Taplejung District is represented as Taplejung_Aatharai Gaunpalika in the "combined" column of all datasets, outputs, and code.

Before creating maps, the same combined identifier should be generated in the shapefile attribute table by concatenating the district and municipality names using the same format. This ensures that the tabular outputs can be joined to the shapefile without errors and that municipalities with identical names are correctly distinguished.

Contact

For questions, comments, or to report issues with the repository, please contact: Anup Shrestha anup.1.shrestha@aalto.fi