EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Local practitioners’ use of vulnerability and resilience concepts in adaptation to flood hazards

Greg Oulahen (), Linda Mortsch, Erin O’Connell, Deborah Harford and Alexandra Rutledge
Additional contact information
Greg Oulahen: Ryerson University
Linda Mortsch: University of Waterloo
Erin O’Connell: University of Waterloo
Deborah Harford: Simon Fraser University
Alexandra Rutledge: University of Waterloo

Climatic Change, 2019, vol. 153, issue 1, No 4, 58 pages

Abstract: Abstract Vulnerability and resilience are important ideas that are conceptualized in many different ways by researchers studying disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Four main conceptualizations of vulnerability in the literature include vulnerability as a threshold, as exposure to hazards, as a pre-existing condition, and as an outcome. Three main conceptualizations of resilience are resilience as resistance, as recovery, and as creative transformation. This study investigates how local practitioners in Metro Vancouver municipalities perceive and apply these concepts to reduce risk and adapt to flood hazards. Results from focus groups and surveys of practitioners find that the conceptualizations of vulnerability and resilience perceived as most valuable are often not applied in local risk reduction and adaptation efforts. Participants’ interpretations of how vulnerability and resilience concepts are applied to four main adaptation strategies—protect, accommodate, avoid, and retreat—reveal nuanced and complex challenges at the intersection of where theory meets practice. As currently operationalized, vulnerability and resilience appear unlikely to lead to anything more than incremental adaptation.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-019-02386-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:climat:v:153:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02386-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-019-02386-w

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:153:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02386-w