Abstract
The concepts vulnerability and risk are of great importance in the fields of climate change and natural hazards. Confusion is asserted in the terminology used by the respective communities, and a large conceptual literature has not solved this problem. This affects the communication within and between the two communities and the comparison of results from vulnerability and risk assessments. This paper argues that the main difference between methods to assess vulnerability and risk in the climate and the disaster communities is not a conceptual one, but rather different terminologies are used. This point is made using a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change that makes the structure of vulnerability and risk assessments explicit. The framework distinguishes three assessment approaches in the field of vulnerability to climate change, which recur—under different labels—in the risk assessment approaches analysed. While within each community, the same terms are ambiguously used to refer to more than one assessment approach, the confusion is enhanced between the two communities by using different labels for very similar approaches. As an application of the results, similarities and differences between two assessment tools are analysed: the Dynamic Interactive Vulnerability Assessment model (DIVA) for the case of vulnerability to climate change and the CATastrophe SIMulation model (CatSim) for risk of natural hazards.
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Notes
This is true in the cases that are of interest here, ‘vulnerability to climate change’ and ‘vulnerability to natural hazards’. Other cases, like ‘vulnerability to poverty’ will not be treated here (see, e.g. Ionescu 2009).
For example, the UN/ISDR (2007) defines: “Hazard: a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause the loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.”
Previous conceptual work, with which the framework used here is consistent (see Wolf et al. 2011), has identified the problem that “\(\ldots\) the word ‘vulnerability’ means different things to different researchers” (O’Brien et al. 2007, p. 74). However, it has tried to distinguish different vulnerability concepts at the theoretical level, thus remaining less clear.
For example, the Oxford Dictionary of English entry mentions both a present property, “a situation involving exposure to danger”, and the implicit steps observed for vulnerability: “the possibility that something unpleasant or unwelcome will happen” (Soanes and Stevenson 2005, our emphasis).
To do the authors justice, it should be mentioned that Wisner et al. (2004) do not want to assess risk in this way. They consider the PAR an oversimplified model and later propose the ‘access model’ to overcome the strict separation of hazard and vulnerability. For clarification of the concept risk, however, the PAR model must suffice here.
The triangle metaphor, however, cannot serve to compute risk from values of the three components. For example, if the sum of two sides does not exceed the length of the third side, no triangle area can be associated to the three lengths. A further question would be how to reduce the results from the components’ assessments to a length, that is a single number.
Crichton (1999) admits that disaster management practitioners may find the way in which insurers consider exposure unfamiliar, especially because an insurer may reduce exposure by reducing the number of insured properties. While for a country this is not an option, Crichton proposes examples such as discouraging the development of housing and industry in hazard-prone areas.
Theoretical definitions are not discussed in detail in this paper, but have been considered in the framework development. An analysis can be found in Wolf et al. (2008).
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on research that has been funded by the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission through its project ADAM—Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy. It was inspired by the conference SHIFT07—Perspectives of Vulnerability and Hazard Assessment, Potsdam, October 4–5, 2007, which aimed at promoting a better integration of concepts for strengthening progress towards sustainability. The author thanks Sandy Bisaro, Jochen Hinkel, Stefan Hochrainer, Mareen Hofmann, Cezar Ionescu, Daniel Lincke, Reinhard Mechler and Will Steffen for valuable comments and discussions.
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Wolf, S. Vulnerability and risk: comparing assessment approaches. Nat Hazards 61, 1099–1113 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9968-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9968-4