Abstract
This article addresses resilience and vulnerability as two prominent concepts within disaster risk science. The authors provide an overview of current uses and benefits of and challenges to resilience and vulnerability concepts for disaster risk management (DRM). The article summarizes the evolution of these concepts and of attempts to define them precisely, and addresses the potential benefits of conceptual vagueness. The usage and conception of resilience and vulnerability within a selection of strategies and legislations in DRM are compared. Complementing this analysis of disaster risk research and management practice, a survey identifies some of the benefits of and challenges to the concepts of resilience and vulnerability as seen by a peer-community. Synthesizing the three approaches, we conclude that a certain conceptual and methodological “haze” prevails, which hampers the transfer of information and findings within disaster risk science, from science to practice, and vice versa. But this vagueness offers opportunities for communication between disaster risk science, policy, and practice. Overall, evaluations of the resilience and vulnerability concepts are lacking, which demands the development of criteria to identify and assess the challenges to and benefits of resilience and vulnerability for DRM.
Highlights
The first phase of United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)’s Hyogo Framework for Action (UNISDR 2005) will end in 2015, currently prompting considerations of how to proceed to effectively reduce disaster losses on a global scale
We use the term ‘‘resilience and vulnerability concepts’’ to refer to the whole range of resilience and Fekete et al Benefits and Challenges of Resilience and Vulnerability vulnerability theories, frameworks, conceptual components, methods, and data that are used in disaster risk management (DRM), as well as in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) research and policy fields
Science trend was given as a reason for adopting the term resilience more often than it was for vulnerability
Summary
The first phase of United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)’s Hyogo Framework for Action (UNISDR 2005) will end in 2015, currently prompting considerations of how to proceed to effectively reduce disaster losses on a global scale. After several decades of discussion and application in the field of disaster risk management (DRM), it is time to recapitulate the benefits that the resilience and vulnerability concepts offer for DRM. Under the impression of extensive damage and loss suffered following yet another massive flood in Europe, we discuss the recent uses, benefits of, and challenges to the resilience and vulnerability concepts for disaster risk management. We use the term ‘‘resilience and vulnerability concepts’’ to refer to the whole range of resilience and Fekete et al Benefits and Challenges of Resilience and Vulnerability vulnerability theories, frameworks, conceptual components, methods, and data that are used in DRM, as well as in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and CCA research and policy fields.
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