Arctic Water Resources Vulnerability Index (AWRVI)

People in the Arctic and sub-Arctic continue to face uncertain livelihoods as they contend with environmental variability and changes operating at multiple scales. The Arctic Water Resources Vulnerability Index (AWRVI) is a tool for Arctic communities to assess their susceptibility to changing biophysical and socioeconomic conditions affecting their water resources. AWRVI has been applied in seven communities in Northwest Alaska and Southcentral Alaska, and five communities on Chukotka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.

AWRVI is an adaptive capacity index that integrates a range of community-specific water data to provide a holistic profile of vulnerability to changing water resources and a measure of adaptive capacity to respond to change – AWRVI version 2.0 is currently under development at the University of Idaho's Center for Resilient Communities in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center.