Journal ArticleDOI
At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters.
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TLDR
The authors argue that the social, political and economic environment is as much a cause of disasters as the natural environment and that the concept of vulnerability is central to an understanding of disasters and their prevention or mitigation, exploring the extent and ways in which people gain access to resources.Abstract:
Many disasters are a complex mix of natural hazards and human action. At Risk argues that the social, political and economic environment is as much a cause of disasters as the natural environment. Published within the International Decade of Natural Hazard Reduction, this book suggests ways in which both the social and natural sciences can be analytically combined through a 'disaster pressure and release' model. Arguing that the concept of vulnerability is central to an understanding of disasters and their prevention or mitigation, the authors explore the extent and ways in which people gain access to resources. Individual chapters apply analytical concepts to famines and drought, biological hazards, floods, coastal storms, and earthquakes, volcanos and landslides - the hazards that become disasters'. Finally, the book draws practical and policy conclusions to promote a safer environment and reduce vulnerability.read more
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Water in a changing world
Robert B. Jackson,Stephen R. Carpenter,Clifford N. Dahm,Diane M. McKnight,Robert J. Naiman,Sandra Postel,Steven W. Running +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conclude that over half of accessible fresh runoff globally is already appropriated for human use, and that more than 1 × 109 people currently lack access to clean drinking water and almost 3 ×109 people lack basic sanitation services, and because the human population will grow faster than increases in the amount of available fresh water, per capita availability of fresh water will decrease in the coming century.
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Temporal and spatial changes in social vulnerability to natural hazards
Susan L. Cutter,Christina Finch +1 more
TL;DR: Empirical evidence is presented on the spatial and temporal patterns in social vulnerability in the United States from 1960 to the present to find that those components that consistently increased social vulnerability for all time periods were density (urban), race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
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Assessing the Vulnerability of Social-Environmental Systems
Hallie Eakin,Amy Luers +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight new insights into the conceptualization of the vulnerability of social-environmental systems and identify critical points of convergence of what otherwise might be characterized as disparate fields of research and argue that a diversity of approaches to studying vulnerability is necessary in order to address the full complexity of the concept and that the approaches are in large part complementary.
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Identifying and mapping community vulnerability.
TL;DR: This article extends the argument using American demographic trends that certain categories of people, such as the poor, the elderly, women-headed households and recent residents, are at greater risk throughout the disaster response process.
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Climate change and food security
TL;DR: Improved systems of food production, food distribution and economic access may all contribute to food systems adapted to cope with climate change, but in adopting such changes it will be important to ensure that they contribute to sustainability.
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