Differing from other attempts to assess vulnerability to climate change, our assessment only considers the expected impact of climate change on physical variables.2 These variables are of course likely to have socio-economic consequences, but they are not socio-economic variables. The rationale behind such an index is two-fold. Second, this physical index does not involve an assessment of the expected impact of climate change on variables such as health and agriculture, which unavoidably is highly uncertain and debatable. The physical index can simply be seen as an intermediary step to assess the link between climate change and these economic variables.