Vulnerability and Risk in Disaster Management

Vulnerability is the extent to which a community, structure, services or geographic area is likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impact of particular hazard.

Tangible and Intangible Vulnerability

There are two broad types of vulnerabilities viz. Tangible and Intangible.  Tangible vulnerability is material. It’s easy to see and value of loss can be easily determined. The main characteristics of tangible vulnerability as follows:

• People – lives, health, security, living conditions
• Property – services, physical property loss, loss of use
• Economy – loss of products and production, income
• Environment – water, soil, air, vegetation, wildlife

Intangible or abstract vulnerability is difficult to see and define. The value of loss cannot be easily determined in terms of intangible vulnerability. The key characteristics of intangible vulnerability are as follows:

• Social structures – family and community relationships
• Cultural practices – religious and agricultural
• Cohesion – disruption of normal life
• Motivation – will to recover; government response

Various Reasons of Vulnerability

There can be many reasons of vulnerabilities. Such reasons or factors may be politico-institutional, Economic, or Socio-cultural.

Political-institutional factors

These include:

• Absence / inadequacy of legislations and policies such as land use planning or building regulations.
• Absence / inadequacy of personnel and financial resources
• Lack of coordination among various responsible institutions
• Corruption and vested interests in administration
• Low level of community participation

Economic factors

These include

• Insufficient funds for disaster management
• Poverty / habitation in endangered areas
• Less diversified economy
• Unsustainable consumption of natural resources.

Socio-cultural factors

• Lack of education – insufficient knowledge of cause effect matrix.
• Superstition – belief that all natural disasters are acts of god and inevitable
• Unsustainable farm practices which may result in erosion etc.
• Population pressure

The above political, economic and cultural factors are interconnected with each other in a complex way. They have a reciprocal relationship and often compound each other.