Climate Vulnerability Assessment

Lecture 01 of 8

Why vulnerability is not the same as risk

The three-part model behind every serious climate risk assessment, and why treating vulnerability as a stand-alone problem gets the diagnosis wrong before the work even starts.

Video lecture35 minCompletedQuiz passed · 100%Written questions to do

In this lecture

  • Separate hazard, exposure and vulnerability
  • Explain why the same hazard produces different outcomes
  • Place vulnerability assessment inside the wider risk framework

Three words, one equation

0:00Three words, one equation8:00
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Risk is not a hazard, and a hazard is not a threat until something is exposed to it and unable to absorb it. This opening lecture builds the hazard-exposure-vulnerability model climate risk assessments use, and follows one cyclone through all three terms to show why the same storm produces a fatality in one town and a power cut in the next.

Vulnerability is the part policy can change fastest

A department cannot move a coastline or cancel a monsoon, but it can put a title deed, a second income or an early-warning system in front of a household before the next event arrives. Hazard and exposure are largely given; vulnerability is where an assessment earns its budget, because it is the term most open to intervention.

Materials

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  • Vulnerability Assessment 01 - slide deckSlides · 2.0 MB
  • Risk framework glossaryPDF · 310 KB

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Lecture quiz

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