Understanding uncertainty and reducing vulnerability: lessons from resilience thinking

Vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards alone; it also resides in the resilience of the system experiencing the hazard. Resilience (the capacity of a system to absorb recurrent disturbances, such as natural disasters, so as to retain essential structures, processes and feedbacks) is important for the discussion of vulnerability for three reasons: (1) it helps evaluate hazards holistically in coupled human–environment systems, (2) it puts the emphasis on the ability of a system to deal with a hazard, absorbing the disturbance or adapting to it, and (3) it is forward-looking and helps explore policy options for dealing with uncertainty and future change. Building resilience into human–environment systems is an effective way to cope with change characterized by surprises and unknowable risks. There seem to be four clusters of factors relevant to building resilience: (1) learning to live with change and uncertainty, (2) nurturing various types of ecological, social and political diversity for increasing options and reducing risks, (3) increasing the range of knowledge for learning and problem-solving, and (4) creating opportunities for␣self-organization, including strengthening of local institutions and building cross-scale linkages and problem-solving networks.     

Managing vulnerability in Sydney: Planning or providence?

Sydney is the largest city in Oceania (the Australia — south Pacific region). During its existence of more than 200 years the city has suffered many emergencies and many psycho-social and media crises — but has escaped major disaster in the sense of deaths or economic loss. Does this indicate that disaster vulnerability has been managed well, or simply that Sydney has been fortunate? The evidence suggests that the natural environment is relatively benign. With some important exceptions, such as flooding, management has rested largely on emergency response, and on handling the residual risk through increasingly sophisticated loss redistribution mechanisms. For the more obvious “natural” hazards this approach has worked so far. But the approach appears to be incapable of dealing with many of the more insidious slow-onset hazards such as environmental degradation and social inequality. Unfortunately these are among the constituent issues of sustainability.     

Resilience to natural hazards: a geographic perspective

Resilience is increasingly used as an approach for understanding the dynamics of natural disaster systems. This article presents the origin of resilience and provides an overview of its development to date, which draws on the wide literature on ecological science, social science, social–environmental system and natural hazards. From a geographic perspective, the model of disaster resilience of “Loss–Response” of Location (DRLRL) was created and disaster resilience was defined from three dimensional mode, which focused on the spatial, temporal scale of resilience and attributes of hazard-affected bodies. A geographic approach was put forward to measure the disaster resilience, including two properties of inherent resilience and adaptive resilience and a case study was implemented in order to validate this approach. This perspective would offer greater potential in application of resilience concept, especially in the process of integrated risk management and disaster recovery.     

Re-specifying disaster risk: concepts,methods, and models

The discussion on the social-ecological dimensions of hazards is constantly evolving. This paper explores the trajectory of research relating to hazards and their impact on vulnerable human populations. Interpretations of disaster risk have included estimating losses in terms of human life and property, and analyzing the social mechanisms in place that exacerbate or mitigate a population’s sensitivity to hazard events. In keeping with recent trends in research relating to disaster risk, the paper focuses on the social dimension of vulnerability and the contribution of social structures and relationships in building community resilience. Institutional frameworks and policies in particular determine the quantity and quality of resources and services available to people that contribute to resilience over time. The hazard-risk-location-model (HRLM) is proposed that is based on re-specifying disaster risk in terms of exposure and coping ability to capture the focus on social vulnerability and resilience. The framework of the HRLM incorporates the following components: (1) linkages within existing social capital; (2) spatial variation in social and institutional frameworks; (3) positive and negative feedbacks; and (4) characteristics of the hazard event. The model contributes to the range of place-based assessments designed to address the human-environmental impacts of hazards and disasters.     

Assessing the resilience of Delhi to climate-related disasters: a comprehensive approach

The study addresses disaster risks in Delhi through a resilience approach. It utilizes the Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) tool, which assesses disaster resilience from five dimensions: physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural. Each dimension comprises 5 parameters, and each parameter consists of 5 variables. The study is carried out in the nine revenue districts of Delhi and reveals that East Delhi is least resilient and New Delhi is most resilient. The CDRI analysis in East Delhi points out the urgent need to focus on key parameters such as housing and land use, population, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. On the other hand, New Delhi is the most resilient due to all five dimensions, where most significant parameters responsible for its high resilience are housing and land use, population, income, employment, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. In addition, the overall results of all nine districts show an inverse relationship between resilience score and population density. For example, districts with higher population density show low resilience and vice versa. Moreover, districts located on hazard-prone areas show low resilience. For example, East Delhi and North East Delhi scored low resilience because they both are situated on the Yamuna flood catchment areas. The study further develops key suggestions that are required to address disaster risk in all nine districts of Delhi and discusses future implications of CDRI to address city??s vulnerability. The approach??s distinctness is reflected through its consideration of micro-level diversities and presents some implications to resilience.     

Social-ecological resilience thinking as a bridging concept in transdisciplinary research on climate-change adaptation

This paper explores the advantages of applying the concept of social-ecological resilience (SER) and the related thinking in transdisciplinary research. The theoretical reflections are exemplified by transdisciplinary research experiences using the concept of SER as a bridging concept in the field of climate-change adaptation instead of developing a new and very context-specific conceptual bridge. The findings are based on ontological reflections concerning the complex and hybrid phenomenon of climate change and the need for transdisciplinary research as well as on reflections on the performed interdisciplinary research and the exploratory transdisciplinary research approach with practitioners from the German administration. The experiences so far have shown that it was more focused on the general ideas of social-ecological resilience thinking instead of using the concept of SER as an analytical tool. We conclude that the use of a common conceptual framework in general and of social-ecological resilience thinking in particular offers tangible advantages in transdisciplinary research dealing with climate change and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. In our case, social-ecological resilience thinking helped—after translation into practical terms—to open the field for further consideration from the very beginning as well as to open the space for common creative work; to define the problem; and to choose the relevant variables to look at.     

Earthquake hazards and community resilience in Baluchistan

Resilience is widely used from a variety of research perspectives; however, community resilience in particular is applied to a number of natural hazards and disasters-related studies, programs, and activities. It is also acknowledged that its measurement is cumbersome but not impossible. The prime objective of this paper is to measure the community resilience of an earthquake-prone area in Baluchistan. The article presents the concept of resilience, its approaches, selection of indicators, formulation of subjective assessment method for weighting the indicators, and finally, developing the community resilience index. For the community resilience measurement, a survey was conducted among 200 households in two earthquake risk zones of Quetta city, using simple random sampling method. The overall composite community resilience index revealed that the resilience is low in both the zones??A and B. However, it is revealed that there is a significant difference between the zones when compared against the components and indicators. Community resilience components such as economic, institutional, and physical have received higher index values in Zone B as compared to Zone A. Based on the findings, it is recommended to improve the socioeconomic, institutional, and structural (housing) conditions of the community by raising the community awareness and preparedness, implementing building codes, and providing income-generating activities in order to enhance the community resilience to cope up with earthquake hazards in the future.     

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory for modelling community resilience to natural disasters

This paper advocates the use of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory as a framework to analyse resilience at diverse scales. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory can be employed to (a) benchmark social resilience, (b) target the priority interventions required and (c) measure progress arising from these interventions to enhance resilience to natural disasters. First, the paper explores resilience to natural disasters in the context of climatic change as building resilience is seen as a way to mitigate impacts of natural disasters. Second, concepts of resilience are systematically examined and documented, outlining resilience as a trait and resilience as a process. Third, issues arising in relation to the measurement of resilience are discussed. Fourth, Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory is described and proffered to model and assess resilience at different scales. Fifth, studies are described which have supported the use of the bioecological systems theory for the study of resilience. Sixth, an example of the use of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is offered and the paper concludes with suggestions for future research using Bronfenbrenner’s theory.     

Land-use planning for natural hazards in New Zealand: the setting,barriers, ‘burning issues’ and priority actions

Land-use planners have a critical role to play in building vibrant, sustainable and hazard resilient communities in New Zealand. The policy and legal setting for natural hazards planning provides a solid foundation for good practice. But there are many examples of ‘bad practice’ that result in unnecessary risks and, in some cases, exposure to repeat events and potentially devastating impacts. Much, therefore, remains to be done to improve hazards planning policy and practice in New Zealand. This article explores the questions: What role does land-use planning play in managing hazard risks in New Zealand; and what needs to be done to reduce hazard risks and build community resilience? The article starts by describing the milieu within which natural hazards planning takes place. It goes onto outline the stakeholders and institutional and legal setting for natural hazards planning in New Zealand, including barriers to realising the potential of natural hazards planning. This synthesis reveals a number of ‘burning issues’, including the need to: (a) Improve understanding about the nature of hazards; (b) Prioritise risk avoidance (reduction) measures; (c) Provide national guidance for communities exposed to repeat events and address the relocation issue and (d) Mainstream climate change adaptation. Each ‘burning issue’ is discussed, and priority actions are recommended to realise the potential of land-use planning to reduce natural hazard risks and build community resilience in New Zealand. Ultimately, the challenge is to develop a cooperative hazards governance approach that is founded on coordinated policies, laws and institutions, cooperative professional practice and collaborative communities.     

Vulnerability management by means of resilience

The article decodes and analyzes the standard functions of social and social-ecological systems when they manage their own vulnerability. The author acknowledges these as “Resilience functions” or “Operational Resilience”. For this purpose, she follows a “Vulnerability Actor” (V Actor)-based approach. V Actor is considered as a system faced with multiple hazards, carrying various vulnerability facets (physical, economic, institutional, etc.) and attempting to transform, transfer, rearrange them in time and space so as to achieve Actor’s own persistence. It is these processes of vulnerability re-arrangement that are identified by the author as Resilience functions and which change the vulnerability not only of the V Actor performing resilience but also others’. Performance of Resilience functions presupposes attraction and employment of resources by the Actor, not only own, current and inherent but also other resources to be found in spatial and temporal scales external to or beyond the Actor but which the Actor can appeal to. This attraction most probably leads to deprivation of others of the necessary resources for their persistence, recovery, etc. When somebody’ vulnerability is reduced sometimes somewhere, it is most probable that others elsewhere are encumbered with extra vulnerability, currently or in the future. Hence, what resilience can only do is vulnerability re-arrangement, re-setting and management. The proposed systemic approach is documented on current state of art regarding interactions between vulnerability and resilience to hazards and on empirical evidence from the international experience of responses to natural hazards.     

Modelling intra-dependencies to assess road network resilience to natural hazards

Natural Hazards - Estimating the resilience of a road network (one of the essential critical infrastructures in times of crisis) to natural hazards is crucial in achieving the goals of disaster...     

Contextualizing social vulnerability: findings from case studies across Europe

Social vulnerability is a term that has been widely used in the natural hazards literature for quite a few years now. Yet, regardless of how scholars define the term, the approaches and indicators they use remain contested. This article presents findings from social vulnerability assessments conducted in different case studies of flood events in Europe (Germany, Italy and the UK). The case studies relied upon a common set of comparable indicators, but they also adopted a context-sensitive, qualitative approach. A shared finding across the case studies was that it was not possible to identify a common set of socio-economic–demographic indicators to explain social vulnerability of groups and/or individuals for all phases of the disastrous events. Similarly, network-related indicators as well as location- and event-specific indicators did not have the relevance we expected them to have. The results underline that vulnerability is a product of specific spatial, socio-economic–demographic, cultural and institutional contexts imposing not only specific challenges to cross-country research concerning social vulnerability to flooding but also to attempts at assessing social vulnerability in general. The study ends with some reflections upon the methodological, practical and theoretical implications of our findings.     

Methodology for the assessment and classification of regional vulnerability to natural hazards in China: the application of a DEA model

This paper presents a new method for quantifying vulnerability to natural hazards in China. As an important area of vulnerability research, quantitative assessment of vulnerability has raised much focus in academia. Presently, scholars have proposed a variety of methods for quantitative assessment, which usually create an index of overall vulnerability from a suite of indicators, based on the understanding of the cause or mechanism of vulnerability. However, due to the complex nature of vulnerability, this approach caused some arguments on the indicator selection and the weight set for subindices. A data envelopment analysis?Cbased model for the assessment of the regional vulnerability to natural disasters is presented here to improve upon the traditional methods, and a new approach for the classification of vulnerability is proposed. The vulnerability to natural hazards in China??s mainland is illustrated as a case study. The result shows that the overall level of vulnerability to natural hazards in mainland China is high. The geographic pattern shows that vulnerability is highest in western China, followed by diminishing vulnerability in central China, and lowest vulnerability levels in eastern China. There is a negative correlation between the level of vulnerability and the level of regional economic development.     

Social and Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters

Economic and social development throughout the world is frequently interrupted by extreme events. The Pacific Rim is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, thus to social and economic losses. Although disaster events impact both developed and developing countries, in the latter, they can cause a sharp increase in poverty. As disasters pose an important challenge to the development of the Pacific Rim, it is important to assess their global, regional, economic, and social impacts. Most economic assessments of the impacts of disasters have concentrated on direct losses—that is, the financial cost of physical damage. Equally important are indirect and secondary impacts of disasters, including the destruction of communities and their negative impacts on families. The challenges posed by potential disasters in the Pacific Rim countries require rapid action, and also an energetic risk-management strategy. To help reduce those negative impacts, countries need an overall evaluation of their risks, including: (i) risk identification, (ii) risk reduction, and (iii) risk transfer. It is expected that concerted action on risk management will help create an increased awareness of the economy—wide significance of natural disasters and the problems they pose for long—term development. Accordingly, this growing awareness will lead to an increased resilience in the countries of the Pacific Rim.     

灾害恢复力研究进展综述

自20世纪以来,随着人口、资源与环境矛盾的日益加深,全球各区域的自然灾害成灾次数、经济损失和受灾人口明显增多,自然灾害灾情不断上升,灾害风险已经成为可持续发展的最大障碍。风险、脆弱性、恢复力和适应性相关的灾害综合管理和减灾作为实施可持续发展的重要途径,已被学术界、经济与社会界予以高度重视。在国际减灾十年（IDNDR）活动、国际减灾战略（ISDR）的相继实施的大背景下,国内外学者兴起了研究灾害脆弱性和恢复力的新一轮热潮。目前国内外对承灾体脆弱性的研究较多,但对于灾害恢复力的恢复力研究才刚刚起步,虽然承灾体的恢复力建设近年来也逐渐被认识到是减灾行动中的一个重要环节。20世纪70年代开始,恢复力这一概念首先从力学被引入生态领域,目前,它已经成为生态、灾害和气候变化等多个学科共同关注的对象。对恢复力的概念发展和国内外目前的研究动态进行了较全面的综述,论述了灾害恢复力的科学价值和重要性,分析了灾害脆弱性与灾害恢复力的关系,总结了恢复力评估的主要方法、特点和难点,并在此基础上对灾害恢复力未来研究进行了展望,提出了研究的关键问题并建议进行更深入的研究。     

Social vulnerability to natural hazards in Indonesia: driving factors and policy implications

Indonesia is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and situated at the joining point of four major world tectonic plates. Regions of Indonesia are highly prone to various natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Some recent major natural hazard events are the 2004 tsunami in Aceh and Nias and the 2010 Mount Merapi volcanic eruptions in Central Java. In parallel with advancement in knowledge of the existing hazards, the importance of social aspects of vulnerability in mitigating natural hazards has been acknowledged by the Indonesian government. However, to date, there is no institutionalized effort for assessing social vulnerability to natural hazards that would cover all the districts of Indonesia. Accordingly, no comprehensive profile of social vulnerability is available as basis information for developing strategies to prevent larger risk and losses and reduce vulnerability of communities in Indonesia. Only a few studies have been conducted in Indonesia on this field. This study attempts to fill this gap by quantifying the social vulnerability of Indonesian districts to natural hazards, determining its driving factors and mapping its variations. The social vulnerability index (SoVI) approach is utilized in this study. Three main driving factors affecting social vulnerability in Indonesia are found: ‘socioeconomic status and infrastructure,’ ‘gender, age and population growth’ and ‘family structure.’ The combination of SoVI with thematic map utilizing ArcView GIS can be used to identify districts with relative high social vulnerability level. The results can support the prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery programs of the impacts of natural hazards in Indonesia.     

Analysis of social vulnerability to hazards in China

To improve natural disaster management, it is important to recognize the variability of the vulnerable populations exposed to hazards and to develop location-based emergency plans accordingly. This paper presents a mathematical model to establish a model of social vulnerability index (SoVI), which includes 12 social variables, and the regional social vulnerability to natural hazards was formulated by them. Taking a city as statistical unit, the variability of vulnerability to natural hazards was explored among the 323 cities based on the SoVI. The results indicate that vulnerability is a location-based regional phenomenon, with the most vulnerable cities being located in the southwest of China and the eastern areas being generally less vulnerable. The results will be helpful for policy makers to formulate disaster management plans, which can be beneficial for people in more vulnerable areas who are responding to, coping with, and recovering from natural disasters.     

Social capital,trust, and collective action in post-earthquake Nepal

According to the first generation of theories of collective action, utility-maximizing individuals encountering conditions of nonexcludability and nonrivalry free ride rather than cooperate as their dominant strategy. But scholars have documented innumerable successful and unsuccessful collective action efforts after disasters around the world that contradict that idea. We square the findings of disaster research with the second generation of collective action research by demonstrating how important social capital is for understanding voluntary collective action. We apply structural equation modeling and mediation analysis to data we collected from Sindhupalchowk, Nepal, after its 2015 earthquake to show that bonding social capital has the mediated effect of engendering mutual trust and in turn enabling collective action. Further, we demonstrate direct effects of both bonding and bridging/linking social capital on collective action following disasters. We portray social capital as essential in enabling self-governance and fostering resilience in postdisaster scenarios in which the collective burdens of reconstruction and recovery necessitate concerted efforts on the part of the private sector, citizens, and public institutions.

     

An NGO disaster relief network for small and medium-scale natural hazards in China

Natural Hazards - As China is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to small and medium-scale natural hazards (SMNHs), its NGOs have had a great deal of experience in dealing with...     

Environmental disasters in social context: toward a preventive and precautionary approach

The paper examines relations between natural hazards and social conditions in disaster, and problems of their integration in disaster management. This must be done against a background of ever-increasing numbers of disasters. The initiating roles and impacts of environmental hazards are acknowledged. However, expanding losses are not explained by increased geophysical risks. To the extent that scientific knowledge or engineering and planning skills are involved, the problems seem more one of (in)effective deployment than major deficiencies. Social analyses suggest the scope of today’s disasters follows primarily from greater concentrations of vulnerable people, exposed in dangerous situations, and lacking adequate protections. Firstly, the question of disaster causality is revisited as a problem of damage diagnostics. A basis is developed from the findings of formal disaster inquiries. Despite their limitations, well-conducted inquiries offer unusually comprehensive anatomies of the social and physical conditions of disasters. They demonstrate and trace out the interplay of environmental, societal, technological, and institutional components of emergencies. In the examples described, environmental hazards are investigated in great detail. Nevertheless, societal preconditions are shown to be more critical. Inadequacies in emergency preparedness, performance, and post-disaster response are highlighted, and for those most at risk. The conclusions present major challenges for the agent-specific view of disasters, and for disaster management preoccupied with natural forces, uncertainty, and emergency responses. Rather, a view of disaster causality emerges emphasizing avoidable failures of preventive, protective, and intervention measures. Evidence is cited to show this is increasingly relevant in so-called natural disasters lacking such inquiries. The discussion considers the relevance of a preventive and precautionary approach in this context. The histories of accident, disease, fire, and crime prevention support arguments for greater attention to context-specific environmental and societal aspects of risk. Aligning disaster management more closely with preventive priorities depends upon a much greater focus on people, places, and livelihoods most at risk, reversing the social processes that put them at risk. It requires listening to their voices and concerns, recognizing and bolstering their resilience. Much more can and should be done to disseminate the protections, from building regulations to insurance, that actually do save so many others in the disasters that happen. As such, the case for greater attention to issues of governance and social justice is strengthened.