An assessment and delineation of Socio-economic Resilience Landscapes of the Region based on the inherent latent factors of vulnerabilities

In this era of climate change and rapid urbanization, it is important to understand the metabolism of the regional system to achieve socio-economic resilience. The concept of socio-economic resilience of the region is used to refer the capacity of systems of the region to absorb or adapt shock and vulnerabilities. Broadly, the overall socio-economic resilience of the system is affected by sudden external shocks and inherent latent weak conditions. Latent weak conditions slowly make the regional system weak and more susceptible to vulnerabilities. It is difficult to directly observe the latent factors of socio-economic resilience since these constructs are unobserved or hidden. However, the possible method of measuring the latent factors of socio-economic resilience have been done from the data collected on related variables that can be directly observed and measured. The development of sustainable cities and region by providing a socio-economic resilience measurement framework in terms of latent factors of vulnerability and dimensions of resilience could be the major contribution of the study and it will aid policy-makers in the planning of socio-economically resilient region. The following paper focuses on the determination of factors of the inherent latent weak conditions of socio-economic vulnerabilities and their relationships. The main objective of the paper is to assess socio-economic resilience based on the interrelationship between the levels of vulnerability of susceptible regions and indicators of socio-economic resilience. In the first part of the study, identification and extraction of the determining factors have been done in following two categories – adaptive capacity and sensitivity factors, followed by the study of principal components and dispersion analysis of following two categories. Then in the second part of the study, income-inequality measurement and nesting-shift-share analysis of the susceptible regions has been done to understand the income and employment scenario of the 19 districts of West Bengal, India. Using extracted secondary data, under the two category, factors were determined and its nesting is analyzed in the following 19 districts of West Bengal, India to assess the interrelationships of levels of vulnerability and indicators of socio-economic resilience. Later using GIS, Temporal analysis has been done to visualize the spatial relationships of levels of vulnerability and Socio-economic Resilience. Delineation of levels of socio-economic vulnerability of the region based on inherent latent weak factors of socio-economic vulnerabilities would give a platform to policy-makers for a better understanding of the metabolism of the region through identified latent weak areas contributing to the susceptibility to vulnerabilities of the region.