Moving from Hazard Vulnerability to Disaster Resilience: The Experience from Mississippi’s Gulf Coast

October 11, 2012 | 16:30 h - 18:00 h

Risk and Uncertainty Lecture with Susan Cutter, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina

Chair: Fabrice Renaud, Head of Section at UNU-EHS

Discussant: Joachim von Braun, ZEF-Director

at ZEF (ground floor conference room)

Abstract of lecture

For the past decade, hazards and disasters researchers have focused on what makes people and places vulnerable to natural hazards. The development of geo-referenced vulnerability metrics, especially those capturing social vulnerability (such as the Social Vulnerability Index), enabled comparisons between places in terms of attributes that influenced the ability of populations to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Hazard vulnerability assessments (including both social and physical vulnerability) are now the basis for county and state hazard mitigation plans nationwide. Instead of focusing on vulnerability reduction as a pathway towards disaster risk reduction, federal agency interest is centered on enhancing the nation’s resilience to natural disasters. Using Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and its experience with Hurricane Katrina as an exemplar, this lecture describes the concept of disaster resilience and current efforts underway to measure disaster resilience from community to regional scales.

Background information on the lectures

In this seminar series we address opportunities, risks and uncertainties for development. Uncertainty, i.e. the unknown unknowns, is a particular challenge. Risk and uncertainty have become a focal topic among development researchers, policy makers and practitioners as worldwide, economy and ecology have been assailed by a series of global crises: financial crisis, high and volatile food and oil price, and/or climate change. These crises present threats to development and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The understanding, mitigating and controlling of risk and uncertainty is far from being understood. The seminar series will be a forum for agenda setting and discussion on related themes with leading experts in this field of research and policy.