This document summarizes key concepts around vulnerability and emergency management planning from several sources. It discusses how social, economic, and political factors influence vulnerability. Groups with fewer resources like the poor, elderly, women and children are more vulnerable to natural hazards. Assets like wealth, social networks, and insurance help with coping and recovery. The document also introduces the social vulnerability index to map vulnerable communities and tailor emergency responses. Lastly, it discusses debates around prioritizing vulnerability reduction based on wealth or rights.

1. Emergency Management Planning
PLAN 4015/6015: Risk & Vulnerability
Anuradha Mukherji
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

2. VULNERABILITY
Ian Davis and Colleagues (1994). At Risk: Natural Hazards, Peoples Vulnerability & Disasters
1. Social, political and economic environment as much a cause
as the natural environment
2. Exposure to risk is different depending on living condition
3. Events such as famines, drought, biological, floods, coastal
storms, earthquakes, volcanos & landslides are hazards by
themselves, but can become disasters (loss of life and property)
under certain conditions.
4. Can include macro forces such as urbanization, loss of forests or
at the micro level, lack of mobility, insurance, community
preparedness.
5. “Vulnerability is defined as the characteristics of a person or
group that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope
with, and recover from the impact of a hazard”
6. Some variables are:
class, occupation, ethnicity, gender, health, disability, age, and
immigration status (legal or illegal).
7. “So Vulnerability is very relative – some experience higher level
of vulnerability”

3. VULNERABILITY & ASSETS
Ian Davis and Colleagues (1994). At Risk: Natural Hazards, Peoples Vulnerability & Disasters
Some Important Points on Vulnerability:
1. Vulnerability does not necessarily equate to financial poverty
2. Vulnerability to loss during a hazard creates disaster at all levels
3. E.g., Vulnerable to loss of life, health, livelihood, resources,
assets, etc – not to be equated with capacity or ability to cope
4. Absolute and Relative Loss (wealthy greater absolute loss; poor
greater relative loss)
5. Wealthy also suffer losses in a disaster – but they hold resources
such as home insurance, personal savings, financial assets, and
stable employment – so able to recover faster
6. Low-income groups – have fewer assets, usually no insurance,
no access to financial resources, and less diversified sources of
income
7. Assets can include: Financial (cast, savings, loans, pensions);
Physical (house, land, livestock, tools, equipment, gold), human
(education, skills, knowledge, health); social (kinship networks,
relations based on trust, access to institutions)
8. More assets mean less vulnerability to long-term negative
impacts of a disaster and ability to cope with and recover

4. VULNERABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES
Susan Cutter and Colleagues (2006). Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe
1. In 2003 more that 159 million Americans (53 percent of US
population) lived in a coastal county, up from 28 percent in 1980
2. Growth is most visible along nation‟s hurricane coasts – Cape
Cod to Miami & Texas to Florida Keys
3. Not just seasonal population but year round residents – elderly
retirees or service industry workers in tourism
4. Coastal residents are more racially & ethnically diverse than in
past decades – low wage jobs have fuelled the diversity
5. Rich live right along the shoreline and income gradient
decreases with distance away from the water‟s edge
6. American dream of single detached house is beyond reach of
half of nation‟s households, so households living in manufactured
housing or mobile homes (highly vulnerable to high winds and
storms) especially in coastal counties in the Gulf and southeast
US

5. SOCIAL VULNERABILITY
Susan Cutter and Colleagues (2006). Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe
Morrow, Betty H. (1999) Identifying and Mapping Community Vulnerability
Susceptibility of social groups to hazard impacts:
1. Product of social inequalities
2. Demographic characteristics of the population (e.g., age,
gender, wealth)
3. For instance, women suffer more – more care giving
responsibilities; have to meet daily needs of family, children,
elderly; more likely to lose job; lack secure income or
employment; less resources, aid is often given automatically to
male head of household; increase in family violence
4. Complex constructs as well – health care provision, access to
lifelines (e.g., emergency response personnel, goods, services)
5. Built environment – nature and age of the housing stock
6. Comerio obseves: In San Francisco, 20,000 seismically unsafe
tenement units and another 44,000 in Los Angeles, inhabited by
low-income immigrant communities. Making them safe would
increase rents and put them out of the units, possibily into
homelessness, so units remain vulnerable

6. SOCIAL VULNERABILITY IN URBAN DISASTER
Susan Cutter and Colleagues (2006). Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe
Social vulnerability in urban disaster:
1. Our preparedness experience mostly in suburban context, not an
urban central city (e.g., New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina)
2. Suburban areas have lower population and housing densities
3. Primary mode of transport is the private automobile
4. Evacuation is relatively straightforward (even with traffic
congestion)
5. Small percentage of „special needs‟ populations requiring
assistance (e.g., infirm or mobility impaired elderly)
6. Evacuations from Mississippi and Alabama reflect the suburban
experience and went smoothly as opposed to New Orleans
7. Inner city residents in urban metropolitan areas may not have
the wealth of their suburban counter parts & rely on public
transport
8. In New Orleans, more than 50,000 people or 27 percent of
population did not have a car and had to seek shelter
9. Pre-existing social vulnerabilities made Hurricane Katrina into a
catastrophe

7. SOCIAL VULNERABILITY INDEX (SoVI)
Susan Cutter and Colleagues (2006). Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe
Morrow, Betty H. (1999) Identifying and Mapping Community Vulnerability
1. SOVI - method to create vulnerability maps
2. Shows which communities, counties, and states are most
vulnerable and the factors driving their vulnerability
3. The SoVI can help policy makes and responders tailor response
according to vulnerability characteristics of populations
4. Not „one size fits all‟ policy and response to risk reduction and
disaster response
5. Factors – Economic resources (e.g., assets, savints); Housing
Location (economic and social arrangement decides location);
Housing Quality (housing an indicator of social and economic
status).
6. Poor usually do not have choice where to locate – usually close
to jobs, cannot spend on transport; Rich locate on risky places
out of choice
7. “Unequal access to opportunities, resources, and unequal
exposure to risk”

8. VULNERABILITY & HAZARD MITIGATION
Boyce, J. (2000). Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights & Disaster Vulnerability
Boyce helps us understand the problem of vulnerability and
mitigation in larger theoretical terms – framing it as public bad or
goods
1. Vulnerability to natural and technological hazards is to a large
extent a public bad, because disasters typically strike
communities and not isolated individuals
2. By same token, measures to reduce vulnerability are to a large
extent public good
3. Pure public good – when provided to one is provided to all (non-
excludability), consumption does not diminish availability to
others (e.g. national defense)
4. Vulnerability reduction – impure public good & impure private
good
5. An impure public good – when provided to one, it is also
provided to others but not equally (e.g., flood control, only
populations who live or own assets in protected areas benefit)
6. An impure private good – not everyone can acquire it and the
market may not want to provide it
7. Measures to reduce vulnerability often lie in-between the public
& private good

9. POLICY ISSUES
Boyce, J. (2000). Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights & Disaster Vulnerability
1. How much disaster vulnerability reduction to provide?
2. Whom it should be provided to?
3. A political-economy problem, we are discussing allocation of
scarce resources among competing individuals, groups, and
class
4. Two ways to approach these questions

10. WEALTH BASED APPROACH
Boyce, J. (2000). Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights & Disaster Vulnerability
1. Founded on willingness to pay, in turn conditioned by ability to
pay. Those willing and able to pay more deserve to get more
2. Richer individuals, groups, and classes will get more of the
impure public good of vulnerability reduction than the poor
3. Probably how it usually works in practice, though not very
effective when poor communities are located in risky areas
because the rent or housing price is cheaper there

11. RIGHTS BASED APPROACH
Boyce, J. (2000). Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights & Disaster Vulnerability
1. Based on egalitarian distribution of the right to a clean and safe
environment
2. Puts equal weight on the right of risk reduction to all individuals
regardless of their income or wealth
3. Rights based approach would define liability on the same basis
as right to a safe environment for all, infringement of this right
would create legal ground for restitution claims
4. Private companies would insure against such claims, this opens
an avenue for the insurance sector to play a role in the
enforcement of safety standers (e.g., BP oil spill), more unsafe the
facility, higher the price of insurance
5. In case of industrial disasters, this allows the insurance sector to
play a role even when the individuals whose safety are at risk are
too poor to buy insurance

12. PROBLEMS WITH RIGHTS BASED APPROACH
Boyce, J. (2000). Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights & Disaster Vulnerability
1. Non-uniform spatial distribution of human population
2. Difference between saying each individual has equal rights to
risk mitigation and that the weight of each individual‟s risk is
equal (e.g., risks in densely populated areas carry greater weight
than same risks in less dense areas)
3. Reconciling equitable allocation of right to life and the
inequitable allocation of economic wealth and political power
4. Private risk mitigation can be privately purchased, so distribution
is based on ability and willingness to pay.
5. So priority will be for those who are less able to pay privately. This
is a public policy dilemma as there is no guarantee that
wealthier communities will agree OR what happens when
wealthy communities refuse to comply with public mitigation
initiatives and strategies because they do not want anyone
telling them what to do on their private properties
In conclusion, both approaches have long co-existed, both have
problems as none are perfect when applied to vulnerability
reduction…so tension between the two will remain…