Vulnerability Analysis for Environmental Hazards

Abstract This entry details a spatial social science perspective for environmental hazards vulnerability analysis. Vulnerability science is an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the characteristics of potential hazards such as magnitude, frequency, and duration (physical vulnerability) with characteristics of people and the built environment that either increase or decrease their impacts (social vulnerability). It is the combination of the physical and social processes and associated outcomes that contribute to the overall vulnerability of places. Spatial social science methods and tools (such as geographic information systems) provide the integrative mechanism for comparing vulnerability at various geographic scales such as census tracts, counties, or cities.