ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT: Human societies and territories have always been confronted with hazards and risks, which are occasionally the source of disasters. Over the last 30 years, research on risks and disasters has greatly increased and focused on the vulnerability and resilience of societies. Resilience is often presented as an antonym of vulnerability, but in fact, the relationships are somewhat more complex. This paper adresses one of the challenges for research today-that of understanding the relationships established between the concepts of vulnerability and resilience. In order to understand these relationships, we propose a conceptual model of Resiliencery Vulnerability. This model is based on current knowledge of the risk and disaster domain. But although resilience is often presented as a sort of ultimate aim, we see things differently. The notion of Resiliencery Vulnerability expresses the idea that vulnerability is not necessarily a concept with a negative connotation and resilience a concept with a positive connotation.