Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards presents a broad range of current approaches to measuring vulnerability. It provides a comprehensive overview of different concepts at the global, regional, national, and local levels, and explores various schools of thought. More than 40 distinguished academics and practitioners analyse quantitative and qualitative approaches, and examine their strengths and limitations. This book contains concrete experiences and examples from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe to illustrate the theoretical analyses.The authors provide answers to some of the key questions on how to measure vulnerability and they draw attention to issues with insufficient coverage, such as the environmental and institutional dimensions of vulnerability and methods to combine different methodologies.This book is a unique compilation of state-of-the-art vulnerability assessment and is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers, practitioners, and anybody else interested in understanding the fundamentals of measuring vulnerability. It is a critical review that provides important conclusions which can serve as an orientation for future research towards more disaster resilient communities.

With chapters that incorporate additional perspectives on social vulnerability, this second edition focuses on the social construction of disasters, demonstrating how the characteristics of an event are not the only reason that tragedies unfurl. It incorporates disaster case studies to illustrate concepts, relevant and seminal literature, and the most recent data available. In addition to highlighting the U.S. context, it integrates a global approach and includes numerous international case studies. The book highlights recent policy changes and current disaster management approaches and infuses the concept of community resilience and building capacity throughout the text.

A comprehensive overview of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience for natural hazards research for both physical and social scientists.

The term 'natural disaster' is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase 'natural disaster' suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. The updated new edition confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream 'development'. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant 'root causes' to 'unsafe conditions' in a 'progression of vulnerability'. The other uses the concepts of 'access' and 'livelihood' to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. Examining key natural events and incorporating strategies to create a safer world, this revised edition is an important resource for those involved in the fields of environment and development studies.

Raging floods, massive storms and cataclysmic earthquakes: every year up to 340 million people are affected by these and other disasters, which cause loss of life and damage to personal property, agriculture, and infrastructure. So what can be done? The key to understanding the causes of disasters and mitigating their impacts is the concept of 'vulnerability'. Mapping Vulnerability analyses 'vulnerability' as a concept central to the way we understand disasters and their magnitude and impact. Written and edited by a distinguished group of disaster scholars and practitioners, this book is a counterbalance to those technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at disasters as natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe - a condition, they argue, that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. The book also looks at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and its impact on policy and people's lives, through consideration of selected case studies drawn from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mapping Vulnerability is essential reading for academics, students, policymakers and practitioners in disaster studies, geography, development studies, economics, environmental studies and sociology.

This is the first English language book to systematically introduce basic theories, methods and applications of disaster risk science from the angle of different subjects including disaster science, emergency technology and risk management. Viewed from basic theories, disaster risk science consists of disaster system, formation mechanism and process, covering 3 chapters in this book. From the perspective of technical methods, disaster risk science includes measurement and assessment of disasters, mapping and zoning of disaster risk, covering 4 chapters in this book. From the angle of application practices, disaster risk science contains disaster management, emergency response and integrated disaster risk paradigm, covering 3 chapters in the book. The book can be a good reference for researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of disaster risk science and natural disaster risk management for more actively participating in and supporting the development of "disaster risk science".

Assessment of Vulnerability to Natural Hazards covers the vulnerability of human and environmental systems to climate change and eight natural hazards: earthquakes, floods, landslides, avalanches, forest fires, drought, coastal erosion, and heat waves. This book is an important contribution to the field, clarifying terms and investigating the nature of vulnerability to hazards in general and in various specific European contexts. In addition, this book helps improve understanding of vulnerability and gives thorough methodologies for investigating situations in which people and their environments are vulnerable to hazards. With case studies taken from across Europe, the underlying theoretical frame is transferrable to other geographical contexts, making the content relevant worldwide. - Provides a framework of theory and methodology designed to help researchers and practitioners understand the phenomenon of vulnerability to natural hazards and disasters and to climate change - Contains case studies that illustrate how to apply the methodology in different ways to diverse hazards in varied settings (rural, urban, coastal, mountain, and more) - Describes how to validate the results of methodology application in different situations and how to respond to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders represented by the public and private sectors, civil society, researchers, and academics