Search results for "vulnerability assessment"

Coping with the impacts of Urban Heat Islands A literature based study on understanding urban heat vulnerability and the need for resilience in citie…

2018

The urban heat island (UHI) is a phenomenon whereby temperature levels in urban areas are higher than in surrounding rural settings. Urban heat islands are a matter of increasing concern, since they can affect communities by exacerbating air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (due to the greater use of air conditioning) and the occurrence of heat-related illness, and may lead to higher levels of mortality. This paper provides a description of the phenomena of (UHI) and an analysis of how cities are vulnerable to it. It highlights the need for resilience and the variety of means by which the UHI can be tackled. It describes a set of trends in two regions in Germany and Australia, which i…

Social vulnerability to climate policies: Building a matrix to assess policy impacts on well-being

2021

In this article, we address the social vulnerability of people to climate mitigation policies and contribute to assessing the social impacts of climate policies by introducing a matrix tool for conducting vulnerability assessments and participatory climate policy planning. The matrix serves as a methodological tool for identifying social groups in their social spaces. First, we lay the foundation for the matrix by linking social vulnerability to equality and justice, demonstrating the importance of addressing social vulnerability in climate policy design and research. Next, we introduce the ways in which social vulnerability has been addressed in the integration of social and climate policy…

Assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to coastal hazards in the Caribbean Region

2014

ABSTRACT Lam, N.S.N., Arenas, H., Brito, P.L., Liu, K.B., 2014. Assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to coastal hazards in the Caribbean region. In: Green, A.N. and Cooper, J.A.G. (eds.), Proceedings 13th International Coastal Symposium (Durban, South Africa), Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 70, pp. 473–478, ISSN 0749-0208. It has been documented that given the same type of climate related hazard and degree of exposure, the vulnerability of a region to the hazard and its resultant damages could be very different, depending on a number of natural and socioeconomic factors. An understanding of the factors contributing to the vulnerability of a region requires a goo…

Stochastic Vulnerability Assessment of Masonry Structures: Concepts, Modeling and Restoration Aspects

2019

A methodology aiming to predict the vulnerability of masonry structures under seismic action is presented herein. Masonry structures, among which many are cultural heritage assets, present high vulnerability under earthquake. Reliable simulations of their response to seismic stresses are exceedingly difficult because of the complexity of the structural system and the anisotropic and brittle behavior of the masonry materials. Furthermore, the majority of the parameters involved in the problem such as the masonry material mechanical characteristics and earthquake loading characteristics have a stochastic-probabilistic nature. Within this framework, a detailed analytical methodological approac…

Near Real-Time Decision Support for Disaster Management: Hurricane Sandy

2014

Assessing vulnerability is fundamental for efficient risk management and emergency response. Integrating analyses from preparedness and risk reduction to inform the response phase requires that structural information about demographics or industry is combined with specific local information that highlights hotspots or emerging risks in near real-time. Owing to its availability on social media or other platforms, this local information is today often collected and processed remotely with the aim to inform responders and the public via reports, maps and apps published online. This paper addresses and discusses the challenges of remote near-real time vulnerability assessments by using an indic…

Emergent vulnerabilities in Integrated Operations: A proactive simulation study of economic risk

2009

Abstract The protection of critical infrastructure requires an understanding of the effects of change on current and future safety and operations. Vulnerabilities may emerge during the rollout of updated techniques and integration of new technology with existing work practices. Managers need to understand how their decisions, often focused on economic priorities, affect the dynamics of vulnerability over time. Such understanding is difficult to obtain, as the historical data typically used for decision support, prediction and forecasting may not be available. We report on the use of group model building and simulation to consider proactively the effects of a 10-year, multi-billion dollar mo…

Decision Support for Disaster Risk Management: Integrating Vulnerabilities into Early-Warning Systems

2014

International audience; Despite the potential of new technologies and the improvements of early-warning systems since the 2004 Tsunami, damage and harm caused by disasters do not stop to increase. There is a clear need for better integrating the fragmented landscape of researchers and practitioners working on different aspects of decision support for disaster risk reduction and response. To demonstrate and discuss the advantages of integrated systems, we will focus in this paper on vulnerabilities and early-warning systems. While vulnerabilities are mostly used to allocate risk management resources (preparedness), early-warning systems are designed to initiate the response phase. Indicator …

Definition of Seismic Vulnerability Maps for Civil Protection Systems: The Case of Lampedusa Island

2016

The opportunity to locate and quantify the major criticalities associated to natural catastrophic events on a territory allows to plan adequate strategies and interventions by civil protection bodies involved in local and international emergencies. Seismic risk depends, most of all, on the vulnerability of buildings belonging to the urban areas. For this reason, the definition, by a deep analysis of the territory, of instruments identifying and locating vulnerability, largely favours the activities of institutions appointed to safeguard the safety of citizens. This paper proposes a procedure for the definition of vulnerability maps in terms of vulnerability indexes and critical peak ground …

Vulnerability Analysis of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures upon a Cyber-attack

2019

The vulnerability of refugees: Some reflections on definitions and measurement practices

2021

The legal and policy discourse on refugees has been mainly focusing on the labelling of particularly vulnerable persons or groups, while it has neglected to offer reflections on the effects of definitions and assessment practices over the creation of stereotypes and of biases in the identification of beneficiaries of protection. The aim of this paper was to offer some reflections on the how categories of vulnerability defined by international and supranational law are operationalised and implemented in the practice of the vulnerability assessment inside the humanitarian organisations. Our analysis shows that the vagueness of the legal definitions affects the way in which humanitarian organi…