Mapping Vulnerability

Conclusion: Vulnerability Analysis as aMeans of Strengthening PolicyFormulation and Policy Practice

 

Georg Frerks and Stephen Bender

INTRODUCTION

In an overview article about the state of disaster studies on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the journal Disasters in 1997, David Alexander asserted that the emergence of the notion of vulnerability is one of the most salient achievements in the field during the last decades (Alexander, 1997). Indeed, societal preoccupation with vulnerability and risk to various forms of impact has replaced the earlier global focus upon aspects of wealth as the primary shaper of world development. Exposure to disaster has become recognized as a product of hazard and vulnerability, and the latter is seen, ...