ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of vulnerability and resilience as concepts used in the hazards and disaster field, emphasising why they are important when considering the different impacts a hazard will have on a community or area over time. While noting briefly which particular academic disciplines these terms have emerged from, as well as summary definitions by disaster-focused organisations, the key message of this chapter is that these concepts are contested in their definition and are used differently by different stakeholders involved with hazards and disasters. Vulnerability is a concept used in many disciplines, from engineering to psychology, each with their own particular approaches and concerns. Nevertheless, what these diverse uses of the concept tend to have in common is an awareness of the many different economic, political, and social relationships – as well as environments – that people are part of, exposing them to harm and possibly limiting their ability to both anticipate and respond to harm. Here, we focus on vulnerability and development; mapping vulnerability; and vulnerability and the environment. Resilience is a more recent concept in the hazard and disaster field, used by academics, NGOs, funding agencies and governmental organisations operating at all scales. Here, we note how resilience has been understood as the capacity to recover from disaster and explore some of the challenges as well as opportunities that emerge from this concept. We finish the chapter with a brief section on sustainability science.
