There are no one best way to calculate social vulnerability Index.  The work cited Bryant above is good. So too are the works by Cutter and others, Pelling and Uitto, and Birkmann.  I am doing some work on social vulnerability in the Caribbean and one of the difficulties, as in other small islands is availability of data.  While I cannot calculate an index per se, I am looking at other methods of examining what are the key variables/factors that influence social vulnerability in the region (e.g. factor analysis)

I haven't looked at the articles suggested by Haider, however, I would expect that there has to be some element of coping capacity. Wealthier areas may be more affected that poorer neighborhoods but their coping capacity and recovery rate is my higher. 

Pl see the following link.May be of some help, pl.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261634940_Assessing_climate_change_vulnerability_of_water_at_household_level?ev=prf_pub

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254451248_Climate_vulnerability_index_-_measure_of_climate_change_vulnerability_to_communities_a_case_of_rural_Lower_Himalaya_India?ev=prf_pub

I am also working on empirical evaluation of adaptation.

Regards

Article Assessing climate change vulnerability of water at household level

Article Climate vulnerability index - measure of climate change vuln...

Thanks for the interesting literature attached to your posts!

From my point of view, it's not just about calculating/modelling (social) vulnerability in one way or another, but rather to find options to verify the results. Did anyone come across methods/approaches of comparing generic vulnerability indices with people's personal perception of their vulnerability to a specific hazard? This is highly relevant if we assume that the willingness to perform adaptation depends on a person's perception.

I guess this http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002/full is one of the most cited articles on the topic.

Regarding to your question, Professor Cutter uses Principal Components Analysis. I think is a good way to find out hidden factors within groups of variables.

The problem about this kind of methods is, like Robert Luetkemeier mentioned before, social vulnerability indexes usually dont include perception as factor or social linkages (e.g. Family connections, relatives, etc...), for instance. And not only that, actually, the main challenge to assess social vulnerability is selecting the right variables and weight them according to the kind of hazard we are talking about. At this point, qualitative and quantitative methods have a big deal to discuss about.

Haider Al-Ani is right to mention GIS. It can be utilized to address the problem.

Alfredo Pérez Morales has shared a key publication. There is a website with more info about the Cutter's methodology has an Applications page containing data from other countries

http://webra.cas.sc.edu/hvri/products/sovi.aspx

The U.S. Center for Disease Control has a good resource page http://svi.cdc.gov/

http://webra.cas.sc.edu/hvri/products/sovi.aspx

http://svi.cdc.gov/

There are no one best way to calculate social vulnerability Index.  The work cited Bryant above is good. So too are the works by Cutter and others, Pelling and Uitto, and Birkmann.  I am doing some work on social vulnerability in the Caribbean and one of the difficulties, as in other small islands is availability of data.  While I cannot calculate an index per se, I am looking at other methods of examining what are the key variables/factors that influence social vulnerability in the region (e.g. factor analysis)

For completeness sake, let me add the possibility of using remote sensing data. Assessing social vulnerability is a tricky issue, all the more when data are scare. Hence, we tried to see to what extent physical proxies extracted image image data, and how well those can explain a social vulnerability index calculated using census data, following the approach by Cutter et al.

Here is the full citation of the paper: Ebert, A., Kerle, N. and Stein, A. (2009) Urban social vulnerability assessment with physical proxies and spatial metrics derived from air- and spaceborne imagery and GIS data. In: Natural hazards : journal of the international society for the prevention and mitigation of natural hazards, 48 (2), pp. 275-294.

Even if you are not so interested in using image data (or have plenty of ground information or census data), the paper contains a detailed discussion of some of the problems of quantifying SV. Below is also the link to the paper in RG

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225476226_Urban_social_vulnerability_assessment_with_physical_proxies_and_spatial_metrics_derived_from_air-_and_spaceborne_imagery_and_GIS_data?ev=prf_cit

Article Urban social vulnerability assessment with physical proxies ...

 Thanks for providing interesting articles in the research gate 

I think Analytical Hierarchy Approach can be used to calculate social vulnerability. Please do site SVI index for more help. 

Thank you for information. I  used IPCC- LVI 

calculation can be done (see Cutter), but deeper insights one can get from qualitative research, e.g. case studies or life histories, wher emore about the question can be found of what contributes to social vulnerability.

An approach that combines quantitative and qualitative perspectives is the sustainable livelihoods approach, which looks (among others) on the external side, meaning the shocks, stress and pressures from outside and the internal side, meaning the capacities to deal with external factors.