Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CGU Theses & Dissertations CGU Student Scholarship Spring 2021 A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment among Small Farmers: A Case Study in Western Honduras Claudia Caceres Claremont Graduate University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd Recommended Citation Caceres, Claudia. (2021). A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment among Small Farmers: A Case Study in Western Honduras. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 203. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/ cgu_etd/203. doi: 10.5642/cguetd/203 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in CGU Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment among Small Farmers: A Case Study in Western Honduras by CLAUDIA CACERES Claremont Graduate University 2021 © Copyright by Claudia Cáceres, 2021 All Rights Reserved APPROVAL OF THE REVIEW COMMITTEE This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the Committee listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Claudia Caceres as fulfilling the scope and quality requirements for meriting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Systems and Technology. Yan Li, Ph.D., Chair Claremont Graduate University Assistant Professor Brian Hilton, Ph.D., Co-Chair Claremont Graduate University Clinical Full Professor Wallace Chipidza, Ph.D. Claremont Graduate University Assistant Professor Professor Chinazunwa Uwaoma, Ph.D. Claremont Graduate University Research Assistant Professor Christopher Shore, MBA World Vision Chief Development Officer ABSTRACT A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment among Small Farmers: A Case Study in Western Honduras By Claudia Cáceres Claremont Graduate University: 2021 Climate change is now affecting every known society. Small farmers in Low Income Countries (LICs) are especially vulnerable to climate change patterns because they depend heavily on rain, seasonality patterns, and known temperature ranges. To help build climate change resilient communities among rural farmers, the first step is to understand the impact of climate change on the population. This dissertation aims to use information and communication technology (ICT) to assess climate change vulnerabilities among rural farmers. To achieve this overall goal, this dissertation first proposes a comprehensive Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Framework (CCVAF) that integrates both community level and individual household level indicators. The CCVAF was instantiated into a GIS-based web application named THRIVE for different decision makers to better assess how climate change is affecting rural farmers in Western Honduras. Qualitative evaluation of the THRIVE showed that it is an innovative and useful tool. The CCVAF and its instantiation provides an important initial step towards building climate change resilience among rural farmers. It is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive set of the indicators with related measurements and data sources for climate change vulnerability assessment. The framework thus contributes to the knowledge base of the climate change vulnerability assessment. It also contributes to the design science literature by providing guidelines to design a class of climate change vulnerability assessment solutions. To the best of our knowledge, the CCVAF is the first generalizable artifact that can be used to build a group of ICT-based climate change vulnerability assessment solutions. Another knowledge contribution of this dissertation is its reproducibility by making the input and output data available to the research and practitioner community through a GeoHub. For practical contributions, the framework can be easily used by researchers and practitioners to consistently design a vulnerability assessment tool, starting with the set of indicators organized by the three-level determinants, and following specific spatial data analysis and models. Such an ICT-based tool adds practical values to tackle climate change challenges. DEDICATION I first dedicate this dissertation to my Lord and Savior, my strength, and my hope. I also dedicate this dissertation to my wonderful children Christian and Isabella. I love you both to the moon and back. Mom has not been a normal mom so thank you for being patient and loving me always despite my craziness. To all my supporting family Mom, Dad, Carmen, Karina, Tia Teresa, Tia Gloria, Ruth, Benny, and Virgilio for being there for me even though my dream seemed so crazy and far beyond my reach. To all my friends especially Huda, Clarissa, Luis, Jovita, Shawnika, Denise, and Marisol who have given me words of encouragement and have been there for me always. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my wonderful and patient Committee especially Professor Yan Li, who has been my support in so many ways, I do not have words to thank you. To Professor Brian Hilton, thank you so much for your support and guidance. I will really miss our GIS conversations. To Christopher Shore, for supporting my life in Claremont even though you had never met me before. To all my CGU Professors: Professor Olfman, Professor Terry, Professor Chatterjee, Professor Chipidza, Professor Warren, Professor June Hilton, Professor Shabtai, Professor Tchalian, Professor Dodds, Professor Weakley, Dr. Vosko, and Rebecca Holman Williams. Thank you Afaf for your wonderful support along my path. Thank you, Dr. Patricia Easton, for your support while finishing my dissertation. Thank you, James Griffith, for helping me with the IRB approval. I also want to thank my managers at the City of Corona: Chris, Kyle, Mike and Nayse. Thank you for supporting me and allowing me to finish my dissertation. And finally, with a special thank you to my ex-colleagues at World Vision Honduras especially the THRIVE team. I admire you all so much for the wonderful work of changing lives. Thank you all, you made a huge difference in my life and will forever have a special place in my heart. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................................. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................ vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... x LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Vulnerability and Climate Change ...................................................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment .................................................................................. 7 2.1.2 Livelihood Vulnerability Index .................................................................................................... 9 2.1.3 Indicator Approach ...................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.4 Activity-based adaptation index (AAI) ...................................................................................... 10 2.2 Exposure and Sensitivity Determinants ............................................................................................ 11 2.2.1 Forest Disturbances .................................................................................................................... 11 2.2.2 Drought and Soil Moisture ......................................................................................................... 15 2.2.3 Health Access ............................................................................................................................. 17 2.2.4 Socioeconomic Analysis ............................................................................................................ 20 2.3 Sustainable Development Goals ....................................................................................................... 23 2.4 Indicators to measure vulnerability and impact ................................................................................ 24 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 27 3.1 Artifact #1: Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Framework ................................................ 29 3.2 Artifact 2: Web-based App (Framework Instantiation) .................................................................... 30 3.3 Case Study in Western Honduras .....................................................................................................