Vulnerability and risk assessment of coastal hazards in India: Insights from bibliometric analysis and systematic review

Coastal systems, often exposed to multiple hazards like cyclones, tsunamis, floods, storm surges, sea level rise and erosion, have been identified to be at the forefront of climate-induced risks. Although assessment processes of comprehending the risk and vulnerability level have guided only limited action, these remain valuable tools for an ‘objective’ means to identify targeted areas focusing on ‘particularly’ vulnerable. A holistic understanding of how these assessments are conceptualised and operationalised is necessary to understand the challenges that hinder effective translation of the results into actionable decisions. The study combines two complementary methods—bibliometric analysis and systematic review—to synthesise the literature on risk and vulnerability assessment in coastal systems to natural hazard processes. Bibliometric analysis, an established research methodology, was used to analyse trends in publication, author and journal information, hotspot themes and their co-occurrence. A systematic literature review was done to gather specific insights on the regions of study, type of hazards studied, scale of reporting, methods and tools used, indicators used, gaps identified, policy analysis and the reported usability of the risk assessment outputs. We reviewed 178 studies published between 2000 and 2024. The results report (1) nearly twofold growth in studies in the domain of vulnerability and risk assessment in the last 5 years as compared to the previous decade; (2) majority of research focused on the eastern coastal states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh; (3) half of the reviewed studies focused on risk or vulnerability arising due to multiple hazards, followed by cyclones (15.7 %); (4) indicator-based assessments were the most commonly used method (63 %); (5) biogeophysical indicators were more commonly investigated than socioeconomic and (6) the administrative level of reporting majorly focussed on villages (37.9 %). After quantitatively analysing previous research based on qualitative assessment, the study reports significant vagueness in definitions of risk (and vulnerability) and conceptual frameworks. Further, the majority of the studies implicitly emphasised assisting in policy formulation but often failed to explicitly address the specific type or stage of the policy process. In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge on risk and vulnerability assessment for natural hazards in the coastal regions of India.