Sustainability and Social Justice

Measuring the Vulnerability of Populations Susceptible to Lead Contamination in the Dominican Republic: Evaluating Composite Index Construction Methods

Document Type

Article

Abstract

There are several suspected sources of lead contamination in the Dominican Republic (DR) to which populations, to a greater or lesser extent, may be exposed. These sources include: a lead battery recycling plant, a gold mine and vehicles using leaded gasoline. In this paper we create and compare indices of spatial vulnerability using different index construction methods including: the weighted average, ordered weighted average, and Data Envelopment Analysis. The vulnerability attributes used to create these indices include: exposure to lead effluents in water from the gold mine as measured by distance from potentially contaminated water, point source lead air emissions from the battery recycling plant estimated by air plume analysis; and mobile source exposure to lead emissions from road transportation measured by potential traffic impacts. The intensities of vulnerability to lead of the towns and cities in the DR, produced by each of the different index construction methods, are compared and evaluated. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Publication Title

GeoJournal

Publication Date

4-1-2013

Volume

78

Issue

2

First Page

259

Last Page

272

ISSN

0343-2521

DOI

10.1007/s10708-011-9414-x

Keywords

Dominican Republic, lead contamination, vulnerability indices

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