ABSTRACT
Scholarship on vulnerability – and resilience in multiple disciplines provides poses different models and frameworks for these concepts situated in different socio-natural communities. Vulnerability and resilience studies are open to multiple interpretations, and may even represent a “conceptual cluster” of frameworks, ideas, and applications advocating different conceptualizations of what they are. Natural scientists and engineers might apply vulnerability to describe or analyze vulnerable or resilient circumstances or phenomena. Social scientists mighty utilize inductive or deductive approaches to vulnerability to explain or describe circumstances or phenomena. Policy and decision makers might attempt to define, theorize and apply vulnerability understandings to help prioritize policy options for specific circumstances. Cutter (2003) calls for vulnerability science today to “require trans disciplinary linkages, methodological pluralism, place-based knowledge, and a continued practical focus on policy relevancy” (2003, p. 8).
