Perceptions and Consequences of Socioenvironmental Vulnerability Due to Tropical Cyclones in Los Cabos, Mexico

: Climate change has resulted in severe consequences of hydrometeorological phenomena. The municipality of Los Cabos, Mexico, has been the most affected in the state of Baja California Sur by these hazards due to its location on the southern tip of the peninsula, being exposed with approximately 192 km of coastline; it is an environmental heritage that has made the area a primary tourist attraction in Mexico, which has caused a rapid growth in population with little knowledge about cyclone activity. In addition, there is limited knowledge regarding social indicators that measure vulnerability due to tropical cyclones. Based on the above, the objective of this study was to capture community perceptions about vulnerability related to tropical cyclones and to compare the results with real impacts and their index of socioenvironmental vulnerability, which includes indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, to provide useful information to form strategies to mitigate risk. Data were collected through a questionnaire-survey in 335 randomly selected households; we applied a probability model to the perception analysis and calculated an index to categorize vulnerability. We found differences between perceptions and real affectations, with 64% of households categorized as being highly vulnerable to tropical cyclones, and we detected a lower perception about damage suffered to their households. The variables related to knowledge and local or foreigner status were predictors of vulnerability perception. We included georeferenced data on ﬂooding hazard maps as a strategy for adaptation.


Introduction
Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges to society today. The effects on nature and people are first experienced in cities [1,2]; due to a growing world population mainly concentrated in urban areas, cities must take a more active role in the fight against climate change and in mitigating the severity of future impacts. This phenomenon has led to an increase in the risk associated with high exposure to hydrometeorological phenomena. Consequently, disaster risk management and resilience must be integrated into the design of modern urban policies as part of a global strategy to achieve sustainable development and to guarantee intergenerational equity [2][3][4]. Even the term "resilient cities" has been adopted where urban adaptation to climate change is concerned; this term implies a search for the optimal management of existing resources and anticipation of possible problems; therefore, it symbolizes progress and development against inaction. The undertaking of management systems in cities with great dynamism and vulnerability to hydrometeorological phenomena, such as hurricanes that cause floods, as is the case of coastal cities in Mexico, is a central strategy to maintain development dynamics. Therefore, efforts toward the study of the effects of hurricanes and resilience have begun to incorporate such cities [5][6][7].
According to the coastal risk index proposed by Seingier et al. [8], Baja California Sur is among the five states in Mexico with the highest risk, mainly in the municipality of Los Cabos, whose population growth has increased by more than 250% since 2005. This rapid increase also exceeds the ability of the government to develop basic services and infrastructure, leading to irregular settlements. However, people might have low awareness of risk perception-including judgments and evaluations of hazards that they are or might have been exposed to-which is a complex result of hazard experiences, local knowledge, features, and personal behaviors [9].
The assessment of people's vulnerability perceptions also includes multidimensional factors. Vulnerability has been defined in different contexts and based on different topics, including risk, stress, susceptibility, adaptation, resilience, sensitivity, or coping strategies. However, it is possible to find common factors used in most definitions of vulnerability: it is always defined in relation to some type of threat, be it events of natural origin, such as droughts, earthquakes, floods, or diseases, or anthropogenic threats, such as pollution, accidents, famines, or loss of employment. Vulnerability is dynamic, varying across temporal and spatial scales, and it depends on socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental factors [10,11]. Tropical cyclones are the main climate/environmental threats to Los Cabos. However, studies on their effects are scarce, and this makes it difficult to create strategies to manage risks; recently, people's vulnerability perceptions of hurricanes in Cabo San Lucas, a city that belongs to the municipality of Los Cabos, were evaluated, and it was found that there was a high risk of flooding zones, and that authorities have not recognized them; meanwhile, inhabitants had a total perception of their exposure to flood effects and were aware of some self-protection measures [12]. Other studies have also advocated that self-management is a priority since studies have been carried out to analyze the impact of contracting insurance in scenarios of disasters due to tropical cyclones as a viable strategy. However, not all of the population know the advantages of having such insurance [13].
In September 2014, Hurricane Odile resulted in a landfall on the coast of the city of Cabo San Lucas and left economic losses of around $855 million USD. This caused partial and definitive closures in tourism businesses, which are the main source of employment and income for the inhabitants of Baja California Sur. In addition, electrical infrastructure was another heavily damaged sector, leaving 92% of the inhabitants without electrical services for at least two weeks [14].
Based on the above, the objective of this study was to capture community perceptions about vulnerability to tropical cyclones and to compare the results with real impacts and their index of socioenvironmental vulnerability, which includes indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, to provide useful information to form strategies to mitigate risks related to hydrometeorological phenomena. The population of Los Cabos has been the most severely affected by hurricanes that have caused landfalls in the state of Baja California Sur; therefore, there are sociodemographic aspects that should be considered for implementing an approach to minimize any risk. Often, these geographic areas present notable socioeconomic differences, and not everyone can participate in obtaining benefits or incentives; they do not have the opportunities to recover after the effects of this type of event [14]. In this context, we included maps with georeferenced data to locate the most vulnerable inhabitants.

Study Area
The municipality of Los Cabos is on the southern point of the peninsula of Baja California. It is bordered to the north by the municipality of La Paz, to the east by the Gulf of California, to the south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. It covers an area of 3750.9 km 2 and is one of the most visited destinations in Mexico, with a tourism program based on attractive destinations, the landscape, sport fishing, hotel infrastructure, and nautical activities. The latest census indicated that it is the most populated municipality of the state of Baja California Sur with 351,111 inhabitants (43.9% of the total), and its annual growth rate was 4.4% from 2015 to 2020 [15,16].
The peninsula of Baja California is a region that presents extreme floods produced by the runoff generated by hurricanes. In 2001, Hurricane Juliette caused extensive flooding in the Los Cabos region, and this storm produced the highest rainfall recorded in history [17]. It is important to consider that climate change is likely to increase the frequency of the most intense categories of hurricanes in some parts of the world and is expected to increase the sea levels, leading to more destructive storm surges when hurricanes occur [18]. Currently, we do not have any evidence for the Pacific, and it is a priority to take a precautionary approach, especially where the population is concerned.

Methods
To capture information about the community perceptions regarding vulnerability due to tropical cyclones and to estimate the vulnerability index, a survey was disseminated to the heads of the households of the municipality of Los Cabos through in-person interviews. In total, 335 complete questionnaires were obtained through random selection. We calculated sample size using the finite population formula n = Nz 2 pq/d 2 (N-1) + z 2 pq; we obtained a sample size of n = 318 for population size N = 238,487, a level of confidence of 95%, and an error of 5.5 [15]. The date of application was September to October 2017; the response rate was 88%. The questionnaire design considered the criteria set by Nemoto and Beglar [19], which were structured in four sections. The first was related to the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the household to evaluate sensitivity features. In the second section, we asked about the physical conditions of the housing and services available to measure exposure. The third section was designed to obtain information about the severity of damage caused by the recent hurricanes. The final section included questions about the level of social capital of households related to education and culture for disaster prevention (related to adaptive capacity).
We also included eight questions about perceptions, and to assess the results, we used a Likert scale from 1 to 5 in ascending order (Table 1). We calculated the socioenvironmental vulnerability index related to the impact of tropical cyclones to compare affectations versus perception variables; the level of vulnerability was classified into three possible categories, and principal component analysis (PCA) was used, based on the standardization of variables. The level of vulnerability was classified using the Dalenius and Hodges [20] stratification technique, which consists of the formation of strata, privileging that the previous variance of each stratum is the minimum and maximum between each of them, forming homogeneous strata; this classical method is one of the most applied on practical studies [21]. The least vulnerable households are those in a situation where they can cope with impacts of a tropical cyclone. Moderately vulnerable households require temporary assistance in the case of stress or shock, while highly vulnerable households are those who, even with immediate assistance, cannot resume their level of well-being before a tropical cyclone. This index considers qualitative information, and it is a valid way to capture the real impact suffered by a population [22,23]. For this purpose, it uses the model proposed by Marin-Monroy et al. [24], which includes ten variables. Of these, three relate to sensitivity: type of roofing and housing construction material, type of housing floor construction material, and type of housing wall construction material; four relate to exposure based on the perceptions of the degree of damage caused by flooding, high winds, storm surge, and flooding of streams. Finally, three variables relate to the adaptive capacity: degree of information about risks, type of risks reported, and means of information for monitoring civil-protection bulletins and early warnings.
The vulnerability index was georeferenced according to each survey to build a map from the municipality of Los Cabos. For this, a database was generated with the questionnaire data, using the following information: ID of the instrument, latitude, longitude, and estimated vulnerability index value. The resulting database was imported to QGis 2.18 (.csv format) to generate a shape (.shp) of the georeferenced results. The municipality frontier was defined using vector data from the National Institute of Stats and Geography [25]. The index was expressed according to the following categories: a red marker when highly vulnerable, a yellow marker when moderately vulnerable, and a green marker when less vulnerable, according to homogeneous strata.
Finally, to compare the community perceptions with real impacts and their index of socioenvironmental vulnerability, we included risk maps as a tool to help to adopt strategies to mitigate the risks of hydrometeorological phenomena. We georeferenced the survey results with respect to the people who were affected by flooding in the latest Flooding Risks Map of Los Cabos Municipality, according to the Atlas of Natural Risks of the Municipality [26]. For suggestions of strategies and data analysis about the perceptions of vulnerability, correlation, regression, and probability, models were used to detect the predictors and to measure the effects via STATA 16 software, StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA.

Sociodemographic Profile and Descriptive Statistics of the Sample
Regarding the demographic aspects, the average age of the heads of households surveyed was 45 years; 72% were men. Most of the population in Los Cabos is composed of immigrants: around 62.4% were born outside the state of Baja California Sur, and 59.1% had been living in the state between 10 and 50 years. Only 17.9% of the inhabitants had been living in the state between 5 and 10 years. Regarding their maximum education level, 6.87% without education, 23.5% elementary school, 32.5% secondary school, 23.5% high school, 10.4% college or university, and only 0.3% postgraduate studies.
Finally, we classified our sample by income level: 84.2% had an income level of $120-600 USD and the remaining 15.8% $601-1200 USD.

Perceptions about Tropical Cyclones and the Socioenvironmental Vulnerability Index
The results about community perceptions are tabulated in Table 2. The responses are in ascending order based on the Likert scale used, as described in Table 1. The community perceptions about damage were higher for strong winds, followed by landslides and flooding; these were related to their perceptions about vulnerability related to exposure. Correlation analysis also identified that the variables related to knowledge about the Early Warning System (Q6; r = 0.16), damage due to winds (Q3; r = 0.13), and knowledge about cyclone formation (Q5; r = 0.12) were more related to community perceptions of vulnerability (Q8). We also included the educational level variable, since the variables were related to knowledge, and we obtained a correlation of 35%. The regression model indicated that variables Q3 and Q5 were statistically significant. To measure the effects, we also calculated a probability model to determine if local/nonlocal or immigrant inhabitants have different perceptions that affect their vulnerability. We found that the local population had a 9.35% higher probability of better knowledge about cyclone formation (Q5) as well as a 5.04% higher probability of a better perception about the civil protection authorities' performance during hurricanes (Q7).
To calculate the socioenvironmental vulnerability index, the PCA was based on the standardization of the ten variables. This analysis showed three components with the following characteristics: The first explained 26.63% of the total variance, taking into ac-count the exposure of households, through the perception of the damage caused during a hydrometeorological event; the second explained 20.83% of the total variance, related to adaptive capacity (information through social capital, education, and culture for the prevention of natural disasters caused by climate change); the third explained 16.48% of the total variance, showing the sensitivity of households to quality conditions in household construction materials. The total (or cumulative) variance explained by the three components was 63.96% (Table 3). To analyze the correlations among the results of the variables with respect to the components by which they are grouped, varimax rotation was applied [27]. Table 4 shows the rotated components matrix and the main findings on socioenvironmental vulnerability due to the impact of tropical cyclones. The results show that 64% of the sampled households are highly vulnerable, 22% moderately vulnerable, and 14% less vulnerable. With these results, we obtained a flooding hazard map with georeferenced surveys applied to contrast our results and the evolution of assessment of vulnerability as a planning tool (Figures 1 and 2). The map in Figure 2 shows that the surveys were concentrated in the major cities of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, with no visible differences in the results among them. However, some vulnerable patches were well defined, including zones that were defined as secure from flooding in the Atlas of Natural Risks of Los Cabos.

Discussion
Monitoring vulnerability indicators and the factors that cause it benefits urban and land-use planning processes in coastal cities [28]. A particular tool for this objective is a coastal risk map, which shows the degree of vulnerability by area and can be used by coastal engineers, managers, and decision-makers to implement rigorous shoreline and The map in Figure 2 shows that the surveys were concentrated in the major cities of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, with no visible differences in the results among them. However, some vulnerable patches were well defined, including zones that were defined as secure from flooding in the Atlas of Natural Risks of Los Cabos.

Discussion
Monitoring vulnerability indicators and the factors that cause it benefits urban and land-use planning processes in coastal cities [28]. A particular tool for this objective is a coastal risk map, which shows the degree of vulnerability by area and can be used by coastal engineers, managers, and decision-makers to implement rigorous shoreline and coastal management planning as well as to support risk policies to prioritize efforts [4,29]. The results from Los Cabos municipality showed the importance of vulnerability assessment and analysis, as settlements labeled as less vulnerable were exposed to hazards in recent tropical cyclones, suggesting that well-planned cities should be prepared with different tools to prevent future climate-change impacts, included self-protection measures [12,30].
As we noted, demographic pressure and the development of new infrastructures, such as touristic facilities, have increased human exposure in recent decades, and it is suggested that the principle of caution should be observed. The government is urged to take action [31]. Los Cabos municipality has shown one of the highest population growth rates in Mexico. It was found to be highly socioeconomically vulnerable in Cabo San Lucas, according to an indicator of high exposure to the risk of hurricanes [32]. However, the effects of hurricanes are not the same between social actors, and as the study zone is a tourist center, owners of properties and hotels usually have insurance that covers these events, also called natural disasters. On the contrary, most inhabitants have not used this alternative (i.e., insurance), which has been mentioned in other studies as one of the main strategies used for natural disasters in support of the business and priority economic sectors [13,14,33]. The tourism and service sectors in Los Cabos, Mexico, are more likely to purchase insurance for natural disasters; for example, Hurricane Odile caused an estimated 1750 million dollars' worth of damage, and the recovery via insurance of 1200 million dollars was predominantly from the hotel sector (64% and only 1% for damaged vehicles). Additionally, at least 37% of small businesses have contracted insurance services [7,34].
The index calculated in this study showed that the exposure factor was the most important determinant of vulnerability to tropical cyclones, explaining 26.63% of the total variance; the second most important was adaptive capacity, while the least relevant was sensitivity, explaining 16.48%, which shows the sensitivity of households to quality conditions in household construction materials. Another report in Mexico found that this factor, also called physical vulnerability (including house type, roof type, and the number of floors), is the most important [35].
This research included several variables and risk-perception questions to generate a socioenvironmental vulnerability index and an extended questionnaire for community perception analysis, a technique universally used [35][36][37]. Recently, researchers have pointed out that climate-change impacts are associated with social vulnerability; thus, impact assessments must also be viewed through a social lens [29,38]. Our results confirm the importance of knowledge level (study level, knowledge about cyclone formation process, and Early Warning System) as a determinant of vulnerability and a key factor of warning as well as a better understanding about possible effects of tropical cyclones. The community underestimated the effects of flooding and were more prone to associating vulnerability with high winds. The existence of marginal settlements with a low capacity for recovery due to cyclones are generally far from tourist attractions and have a low-income population; in many cases, the origin of these neighborhoods is through the irregular occupation of land [14].
We included an analysis of the spatial-temporal distribution of flooding related to extreme hydrometeorological events through flooding hazard maps, because it is important to know which areas and populations are under threat for risk management scenarios; this is important due to a known association between cyclonic activity and storm-surge flooding in coastal zones [29]. The results showed that, in the municipality of Los Cabos, 34.8% of houses have suffered flooding; however, the community's perceptions about vulnerability due flooding are not a predictor of their vulnerability perceptions due to tropical cyclones. In other words, inhabitants can underestimate the potential negative effects of this factor (data georeferenced in Figure 1). These georeferenced survey results and flooding hazard maps showed sensible information for prevention of losses and are especially useful as a base to build dynamic models that perform process simulation and forecast in future events, especially for sites that have suffered a loss of biodiversity, as is the case for Los Cabos because of its urban development [36,39].

Conclusions
Our results showed that Los Cabos municipality has a high level of socioenvironmental vulnerability with respect to exposure indicators, based on the perception of the degree of damage caused by tropical cyclones; thus, policy-makers' strategies should include more information and understanding of the effects of high winds, flooding, and creek growth.
Community perceptions about vulnerability are related to the degree of knowledge about hydrometeorological phenomena. Strategies have been adopted to target this, such as the Early Warning System and knowledge about cyclone formation. We demonstrated that nonlocal populations need more accurate information. After all, these events are less common and harmless in their origin cities; thus, their effects may be underestimated.
The georeferenced data showed that flooding hazard maps are a useful tool for improving the strategies and learning processes about tropical cyclones in cities where the growth population rate is high and the adaptation process is faster.  Institutional Review Board Statement: Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to it was not required by National Research Council, methods were detailed and recopilated information was for academic and research purposes.
Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement: Correspondence author could provide raw data supporting reported results by a request.

Conflicts of Interest:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.