ABSTRACT
Vulnerability is a condition that describes the ability of something or someone to resist the impacts of a threat and recover from it. It can apply to individuals (specific people, a building), to various social groups (the young, the infirmed) or systems (economic, ecosystem, infrastructure), or can be aggregated to examine societal-level vulnerability or placed-based vulnerability. Understanding societal vulnerability is important for it points out shortcomings in many of the underlying processes and systems that support our current quality of life. At the same time, social vulnerability highlights demographic and spatial inequities among populations, differences that influence capacities to respond and recover from threats. Place-based vulnerability helps us to understand those driving forces that increase vulnerability or hamper its reduction. While it is relatively easy to explain the vulnerability of a coastal community by examining the interaction between natural forces and human agency, the policy options for reducing coastal vulnerability are more complex.
