Vulnerability and Hazard Exposure

The level of vulnerability is highly dependent upon the economic status of individuals, communities, and nations.

Economic Vulnerability

Natural resources depletion and resource degradation are key aspects of environmental vulnerability.

Environmental Vulnerabilty

a state of being in which a person or a group of people remain in an imminent risk of danger. Such dangers are related to the workplace health safety and environment or day to day life.

Hazard Exposure

An area is defined as hazard prone area if the mortality risk is higher than a certain threshold.

Hazard Prone Areas

What is a Vulnerability

It is the characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard.

Mitigation means to reduce the severity of the human and material damage caused by the disaster. Prevention is to ensure that human action or natural phenomena do not result in disaster or emergency.

Mitigation Vs. Prevention

May be determined by aspects such as population density levels, remoteness of a settlement, site design, and materials used for critical infrastructure

Physical Vulnerability

Refers to the inability of people, organization, and societies to withstand adverse impacts to hazards due to characteristics inherit to social interactions, institutions, and system of cultural values.

Social Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the characteristics determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards. Vulnerability is one of the defining components of disaster risk.

Vulnerability is the human dimension of disasters and is the result of the range of economic, social, cultural, institutional, political and psychological factors that shape people's lives and the environment that they live in.

Elements Exposed to hazards

• People- death, injury, disease, and stress • Human activity- economic, educational etc. • Property- property damage, economic loss • Environment- loss fauna and flora, pollution, loss of amenities