Spatial disaster vulnerability and risk assessments: challenges in their quality and acceptance

Alexander Fekete ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2012, vol. 61, issue 3, 1178 pages

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to document the challenges within spatial risk and vulnerability assessments in order to instigate an open discussion about opportunities for improvements in approaches to disaster risk. This descriptive paper identifies challenges to quality and acceptance and is based on a case study of a social vulnerability index of river floods in Germany. The findings suggest the existence of a vast range of challenges, most of which are typical for many spatial vulnerability assessments. Some of these challenges are obvious while others, such as the stigmatisation of ‘the vulnerable’ in vulnerability maps, are probably less often the subject of debate in the context of quantitative assessments. The discussion of challenges regarding data, methodology, concept and evaluation of vulnerability assessment may help similar interdisciplinary projects in identifying potential gaps and possibilities for improvement. Moreover, the acceptance of the outcomes of spatial risk assessments by the public will benefit from their critical and open-minded documentation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Keywords: Vulnerability; Risk; Assessment; Interdisciplinary; Social vulnerability; Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-011-9973-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:61:y:2012:i:3:p:1161-1178

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-011-9973-7

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().