Vulnerability and Resilience to Natural Hazards

In recent years there has been growing recognition that disaster risk cannot be reduced by focusing solely on physical hazards without considering factors that influence socio-economic impact. Vulnerability: the susceptibility to the damaging impacts of hazards, and resilience: the ability to recover, have become popular concepts in natural hazard and risk management. Vulnerability and Resilience to Natural Hazards provides a comprehensive overview of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience and their application to natural hazards research. With contributions from both physical and social scientists it provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the different types of vulnerability and resilience, the links between them, and concludes with the remaining challenges and future directions of the field. Examining global case studies from the US coast to Austria, this is a valuable reference for researchers and graduate students working in natural hazard and risk reduction from both the natural and social sciences.

1. Introduction / Sven Fuchs and Thomas Thaler
2. Vulnerability: an introduction / Alexander Fekete and Burrell Montz
3. Physical vulnerability / Sven Fuchs, Tim Frazier and Laura Siebeneck
4. Social vulnerability / Christopher Burton, Samuel Rufat and Eric Tate
5. Economic vulnerability / Thomas Thaler and Brenden Jongman
6. Institutional vulnerability / Maria Papathoma-Köhle and Thomas Thaler
7. Resilience: an introduction / Christopher T. Emrich and Graham A. Tobin
8. Physical resilience / Anna Bozza, Domenico Asprone and Gaetano Manfredi
9. Social resilience / Gérard Hutter and Daniel F. Lorenz
10. Economic resilience / Carlos Dionisio Pérez Blanco, David Adamson and Adam Loch
11. Institutional resilience / Samuel D. Brody and Kayode Atoba
12. Linkages between vulnerability and resilience / Susan Cutter
13. Synthesis and conclusion / Sven Fuchs and Thomas Thaler