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.

This study measures social vulnerability in the United States Virgin Islands while testing the applicability of a Social Vulnerability Index that was developed for the United States. The main focus was to develop an understanding of the underlying social processes that cause certain people and places to be more vulnerable than others. Using subdistrict level data derived from the 2000 United States Census of Island Areas, a Principle Components Analysis was conducted that identified eight components of vulnerability that accounted for 93.42% of the variance among vulnerability indicator variables in the dataset. The component scores were summed using an additive model to create an index score of vulnerability for each subdistrict within the islands of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas. A comparative assessment of social vulnerability among subdistricts was conducted in a Geographic Information System. By mapping both the Social Vulnerability Index scores and the component scores, the most and least vulnerable subdistricts were identified and the underlying social processes contributing toward this vulnerability emerged. Because of the prevalence of less affluent minority groups, St. Croix was found to be the most vulnerable island, whereas St. John was found to be the least vulnerable island due in part to its affluence and cultural homogeneity. In general, subdistricts with densely built environments, large population densities, and a prevalence of low income minority groups and large concentrations of elderly and/or children were found to be more vulnerable than those with smaller population distributions and more affluent, racially and ethnically homogenous communities. A combination of all indicators of social vulnerability, rather than just one indicator, was necessary to define social vulnerability in the US Virgin Islands.

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

Geocomputation is the use of software and computing power to solve complex spatial problems. It is gaining increasing importance in the era of the ‘big data’ revolution, of ‘smart cities’, of crowdsourced data, and of associated applications for viewing and managing data geographically - like Google Maps. This student focused book: Provides a selection of practical examples of geocomputational techniques and ‘hot topics’ written by world leading practitioners. Integrates supporting materials in each chapter, such as code and data, enabling readers to work through the examples themselves. Chapters provide highly applied and practical discussions of: Visualisation and exploratory spatial data analysis Space time modelling Spatial algorithms Spatial regression and statistics Enabling interactions through the use of neogeography All chapters are uniform in design and each includes an introduction, case studies, conclusions - drawing together the generalities of the introduction and specific findings from the case study application – and guidance for further reading. This accessible text has been specifically designed for those readers who are new to Geocomputation as an area of research, showing how complex real-world problems can be solved through the integration of technology, data, and geocomputational methods. This is the applied primer for Geocomputation in the social sciences.