The Community Census and Spatial Visualization Index (CCSVI)

2026-04-19

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge posed by fragmented and difficult-to-integrate climate hazard and social vulnerability data, which hinders non-specialist users from understanding their interrelationships and impedes the development of effective adaptation strategies. To bridge this gap, the authors developed a web-based geospatial visualization platform that, for the first time, unifies climate hazard, socioeconomic, and infrastructure datasets for the state of Hawai‘i within an interactive, multi-layered visualization framework. By integrating multi-source data with Web GIS technologies, the platform significantly enhances the ability of decision-makers, researchers, and community members to identify high-risk areas and vulnerable populations, thereby improving disaster preparedness and supporting evidence-based climate adaptation planning.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Computer Vision: Remote Sensing / Geospatial AI
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Responsible Web: Sustainability and climate impact of web technologies

Abstract

Climate hazards in Hawai'i are increasing in both frequency and severity, with varying impacts over vulnerable communities. This paper presents the Community Census and Spatial Visualization Index (CCSVI), a web-based geospatial visualization platform that integrates climate hazard data with socioeconomic and infrastructural datasets. This system enables users to explore the correlation between environmental risks and social vulnerability through interactive mapping and layered data visualizations. Social vulnerability and climate hazard data are commonly collected individually, this causes the data to be disjointed making it difficult to combine and analyze directly. With data being unrelated when collected, finding direct comparisons and combining the data is difficult resulting in many non-expert users to not understand the data. Additionally, many existing tools focus on only one of these types of data, limiting their interactivity and failing to make any improvements. CCSVI aims to handle the lack of accessible, unified, and interactive systems analyzing the relationship between climate hazards and social vulnerabilities across the state of Hawai'i. This support favors assisting decision-makers, researchers, and community members in identifying at-risk populations, improving disaster preparedness, and creating informed climate adaptation strategies.

Problem

• climate hazards
• social vulnerability
• data integration
• geospatial visualization
• disaster preparedness

Innovation

• geospatial visualization
• climate hazard
• social vulnerability
• interactive mapping
• data integration