Vulnerability and Impact Flashcards
Defining vulnerability - Cutter (1996)
“a potential for loss”. Individual, social, biophysical. Intellectual variety.”
Defining vulnerability - Adger (2006)
“the degree to which a system is susceptible to and is unable to cope with adverse effects”. System vulnerability – Level of stress, sensitivity to stress and capacity to cope
Vulnerability in relation to political economy of resource use
“vulnerability to environmental change does not exist in isolation from the wider political economy of resource use. Vulnerability is driven by inadvertent or deliberate human action that reinforces self-interest and the distribution of power in addition to interacting with physical and ecological systems” (Adger, 2007)
UN’s International Decade of Natural Disaster reduction (IDNDR)
Vulnerability assessments are used to determine the potential damage and loss of life from extreme natural events
Social vulnerability
Includes the susceptibility of social groups, or society at large to potential losses from hazard events and disasters. (Cutter, 1996)
Vulnerability and biophysical hazard
There is a potential for loss derived from the interaction of society with biophysical conditions which in turn affect the resilience of the environment to respond to the hazard ot disaster as well as influencing the adaptation of society to such changing conditions (Cutter, 1996)
Vulnerability as pre-existing condition
These studies are characterised by a focus on the distribution of some hazardous condition, the human occupancy of this hazardous zone, and the degree of loss associated with the occurrence of a particular event (Cutter, 1996)
Vulnerability as a tempered response
This focuses on coping responses including societal resistance and resilience to hazards. The nature of the hazardous event is usually taken as a given, or viewed as a social construct. This then highlights the social construction of vulnerability - a condition rooted in historical, cultural, social and economic processes that impinge on the individual’s or society’s ability to cope with disasters and respond (Cutter, 1996)
Vulnerability as a hazard of place
Vulnerability is conceived as both a biophysical risk as well as a social response, but within a specific areal or geographic domain - this can be geographic space where vulnerable people and places are located , or social space, who in those places are most vulnerable (Cutter, 1996)
Measuring vulnerability (Cutter, 1996)
Variables related to exposure normally include proximity to the source of threat, incident frequency or probability, magnitude, duration or spatial impact.
Blaikie et al (1994)
Examined causality using 2 alternative models: the pressure release model (PAR) and access to resources model. The PAR model provides an explanation of the relationship between processes that give rise to ‘unsafe conditions’ and their intersection with some type of hazard or disaster event creating a form of social vulnerability. The access to resources model is a more refined explanation of the role of political and economic forces as the root cause of the unsafe conditions
OAS (1991)
Developed a series of multihazard maps that incorporate vulnerability assessments into their preimpact planning and mitigation efforts - these assessments include human populations, critical facilities and lifelines, economic production facilities and differences in vulnerability among economic sectors.
Risk is (Cutter, 1996)
The likelihood of occurrence (or probability) of a hazard and has two domains: the potential sources of risk and the contextual nature of the risk itself. Risks combine with mitigation to create an overall hazard potential.
Vulnerability was traditionally viewed as
Either a pre-existing condition or potential exposure to a risk (biophysical) or as a social condition predisposing some reponse to an environmental threat (social vulnerability). (Cutter, 1996)
Hazards of place model
Can facilitate a single of multihazards approach with differing hazard characteristics and diverse methodological approaches. (Cutter, 1996)
Social science of vulnerability
1 - The ‘Natural Hazards’ approach:
- Vulnerability as likelihood vs impact
- Simple potential for loss, based on the risk
2 – Vulnerability as pre-existing condition: hazard-occupancy-event-loss. Basic understanding of social conditions.
Example – mapping vulnerability
3a – Vulnerability as ‘tempered response’:
- Societal ‘resistance’ and ‘resilience’
- Focuses on chronic and embedded conditions
- Social construction and the role of political ecology
4 - Vulnerability of place (spatial and social)
- Pre existing social conditions of places –geographically centred.
Influences of vulnerability
Cutter et al’s (2003) influences on social vulnerability: socio-economic status, gender, race, ethnicity, family status, education, social dependence, infrastructure, employment etc
Influences of vulnerability: space and time
“…contributing components in the lower Mississippi Valley counties were race and socioeconomic status; along the Texas-Mexico border counties, it was ethnicity and poverty, whereas in the Great Plains counties, it was a combination of economic dependence and an ageing population brought on by depopulation. The overall result was a distinct geography of social vulnerability to natural hazards” (Cutter and Finch, 2008)
Beyond vulnerability
Bankoff (2001:27) “The concept of natural disasters forms part of a much wider historical and cultural geography of risk that both creates and maintains a particular depiction of large parts of the world as dangerous places for us and ours”
Bankoff (2001) critique
Level of detail, cultural diversity, social practices, coping strategies
Social impacts of natural hazards
- Disruption to home, disruption to family life, material recovery process.
- Tunstall et al’s (2006) health impacts: Immediate (injuries, health conditions)
- Physical health affects after flooding
- Psychological and post-traumatic stress effects.
Linking vulnerability to resilience
“To some extent ‘resilience’ can be considered as the flip-side to vulnerability – for example, we might say a ‘resilient community’ is less vulnerable” (Whittle et al, 2010)
Engineering resilience
Associated with the mathematical ecology is an abstract variable - simply the time it takes for a system to return to a stable maximum after a disturbance (Walker and Cooper, 2011)
Ecological resilience
the complex biotic interactions that determine the relationships within a system’ “To some extent ‘resilience’ can be considered as the flip-side to vulnerability – for example, we might say a ‘resilient community’ is less vulnerable” (Whittle et al, 2010)
