Risk and Vulnerability

The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical—and increasingly empirical—work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.

Responding to reports of missing persons represents one of the biggest demands on the resources of police organisations. In the UK, for example, it is estimated that over 300,000 missing persons incidents are recorded by the police each year which means that a person in the UK is recorded missing by the police approximately every two minutes. However, there is a complex web of behaviours that surround the phenomenon of missing persons which can make it difficult to establish whether someone’s disappearance is ‘intentional’ or ‘unintentional’ or whether they might be at risk of harm from themselves or others. Drawing on a set of missing person case reconstructions and interviews with the officers involved with these cases, this paper provides insights into the different stages of the investigative process and some of the key influences which shape the trajectory of a missing person’s investigation. In particular, it highlights the complex interplay between actions which are ‘ordered and conditioned’ by a procedural discourse around how missing persons investigations
should be conducted, and the narratives that officers construct about how they approach investigations which are often shaped by a mix of police craft, ‘science’ and ‘reputational’ issues.

According to Hans Jonas (1903–1993), the modern technological progress endowed humanity with wondrous power, which in the long run risks altering the nature of human action. This is especially true for the realm of collective action, the effects of which evidence an unpredicted issue: the ecological crisis, which is the “critical vulnerability” of nature to technological intervention. This discovery brings to light that the whole biosphere of the planet has been added to that which human beings must be responsible for because of their power over it. There is, however, a further dimension of vulnerability (and responsibility) to be considered, namely the one which characterizes organic life as such. Indeed, the essence of all living organisms–human beings included–is characterized by vulnerability, given their precarious and unstable condition of “needful freedom” towards the environment. Nevertheless, terrestrial life flourished through a multifaceted and unplanned (thus, again, vulnerable) evolution of living forms, ranging from bacteria to human beings – these evidencing a unique degree of freedom, which Jonas refers to as a “metaphysical gap” towards other living beings. The problem is that the present-day technology provides the possibility to manipulate the very essence of life and human nature. Is this process to be accepted and accomplished? And what about the related risks? Indeed, according to Jonas, issues such as genetic manipulation, euthanasia, organ transplantation, assisted reproduction, exploitation of other living beings etc., raise ethical dilemmas which can be addressed thanks to the idea of vulnerability. This notion has, according to Jonas, a metaphysical background, which he describes as follows: in the beginning, the Divine chose to give itself over to the chance, risk and endless variety of becoming. In order that the world (and life, and human freedom) might be, God renounced his own being, divesting himself of his deity. Thanks to this mythical account, the previous levels of vulnerability (concerning nature, life, and human nature) gain further clarification as signs of something sacrosanct.

Resumo: A vulnerabilidade se tornou um conceito utilizado em diferentes áreas da ciência, a geografia utiliza esse conhecimento como um suporte para análise da sociedade e do ambiente físico, compreendendo dessa forma vulnerabilidade como um elemento presente no espaço geográfico. Quando analisado a vulnerabilidade a partir da sociedade, existem diversas subáreas, como vulnerabilidade em saúde, ambiental, econômica, social. Compreender a capacidade que um indivíduo, família, grupo ou uma população inteira, tem para enfrentar, suportar e se recuperar de um evento danoso, com origem natural ou social. Sendo assim a vulnerabilidade social como uma condição é o objetivo central desta pesquisa, que teve como proposta desenvolver um Índice de Vulnerabilidade Social (IVS), para população do cadastro único no perímetro urbano do Distrito Sede do município de Londrina-PR entre 2015-2017, uma população que pode apresentar características sociais de baixo poder aquisitivo, conflitos sociais, alto índice de desemprego, moradias em situações precárias ou a utilização de programas sociais, e como recorte espacial o perímetro urbano do Distrito Sede de Londrina-PR, a população do cadastro único. Para a construção do índice foi utilizada a análise de componentes principais, uma técnica estatística que permite aumentar a capacidade de interpretação de inúmeras variáveis. Como referências bibliográficas foram utilizados os autores, Katzman (1999), Busso (2001), Cutter (2003), Neto (2008), Marandola (2011) e Cunha (2013), que possibilitam unir as perspectivas da vulnerabilidade territorial, com a perspectiva da vulnerabilidade familiar e individual, permitindo a geração de IVS, baseado em informações sociodemográficas e a presença ou ausência do Estado. A teoria foi aplicada em um banco de dados onde as observações eram famílias, que eram representadas por pontos, em uma primeira espacialização, em um segundo passo foi aplicado a técnica de kernel, a qual cria áreas (células espaciais) de padrões a partir das informações pontuais, facilitando a leitura espacial dos aglomerados dos pontos. Para construção dessas células espaciais, foi estipulado um raio de 150 metros de aproximação de cada observação, ou seja, cada família, e a informação contida em cada célula é o valor da média aritmética do índice de cada ponto. Os resultados alcançados demostraram que existe uma relação entre maior intensidade da vulnerabilidade social com as regiões periféricas pobres, a ausência do Estado ou sua presença em situação precária, com as áreas que um dia foram ou são ocupações irregulares e conjuntos habitacionais populares. Entretanto algumas áreas mais centrais do perímetro urbano se caracterizaram com alta vulnerabilidade social, essas explicadas por assentamentos precários atuais, ou por uma presença de forma precária do Estado. Por último foi possível visualizar que as áreas em que a vulnerabilidade social estava manifestada, caracterizam-se por possuir uma própria extensão territorial, como um elemento do espaço geográfico, mostrando sua própria escala de análise, e demonstrando um espaço heterogêneo.
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Abstract: The vulnerability has become a concept used in different areas of science. The geography uses this knowledge as a support for the analysis of society and the physical environment, this way we understand vulnerability as a presente element in the geographic space. When analyzing vulnerability from society there are several subareas such as health, environmental, economic and social vulnerablities. Understand the capacity that an individual, family, group or an entire population has to face, endure and recover from a harmful event with natural or social origin. Thus, social vulnerability as a condition is the main objective of this research, which had as a proposal to develop a Social Vulnerability Index (IVS), for the population of the single register in the urban perimeter of the Headquarters District of Londrina-PR between 2015-2017, a population that can present social characteristics of low acquisitive power, social conflicts, high unemployment rate, habitation in straitened situations or the use of social programs and as a space cutout of the urban perimeter of the Londrina-PR Headquarters single registration. In this Index creation, it was used the analysis of the main component, a statistical technique that allows to increase the capacity of the interpretation of numerous variables. As a bibliographic source, the authors, Katzman (1999), Busso (2001), Cutter (2003), Neto (2008), Marandola (2011) and Cunha (2013) were used to link the perspectives of territorial vulnerability with the perspective of the family and individual vulnerability allowing the generation of IVS based on sociodemographic information and the presence or absence of the State. The theory was applied in a database where the observations were families which were represented by points, first was spatialization, and in a second step was applied the kernel technique which creates areas (space cells) of patterns from the information, facilitating the space reading of the clusters points. For the creation of these spacial cells, it was stipulated a radius of 150 meters of approximation of each observation, that is, each contained information in each cell is the arithmetic average of the each point?s index. The results show that there is a relation between greater intensity of social vulnerability and poor peripheral regions,the absence of the State or its presence in precarious situations with areas that once were or are irregular occupations and popular housing complex. However, central areas of the urban perimeter were characterized by high social vulnerability as explained by current precarious settlements, or by a precarious State presence. Finally, it was possible to visualize that the areas which social vulnerability was manifested are characterized by having a territorial extension as an element of geographic space, showing its own scale of analysis and demonstrating a heterogeneous space.

Este estudo identifica riscos novos e potencializados em projetos de Tecnologia da Informação (TI) com equipes locais. O caráter é exploratório no tocante ao levantamento dos riscos junto aos gerentes de projeto de empresas de diversos setores, onde foram confrontados os riscos encontrados na literatura com os elencados nas entrevistas. Os resultados incluem os riscos que foram identificados pelos entrevistados e ausentes na literatura, denominados riscos novos, e os riscos que foram mencionados significativamente pela literatura e pela pesquisa, denominados riscos potencializados. A implicação para a prática permite às empresas incluírem em suas gestões de riscos dos projetos de TI os riscos novos identificados e maior atenção aos riscos potencializados indicados neste trabalho, e assim permitir a criação de planos de mitigação. A contribuição teórica é a identificação de riscos adicionais ao estado da arte na área de gestão de projetos de TI