Summary and Final Tasks

Summary

We have introduced the three dimensions of vulnerability – exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity – with a focus on coastal disaster contexts. In addition to showing how to quantify these dimensions of vulnerability, we have also shown how this model of vulnerability can be used to assess and compare the physical and social vulnerabilities of different coastal settings and populations. In the activity at the end of this module, you explored how the vulnerability model can be used to compare the vulnerability of three coastal communities to hurricanes.

In the following modules, we will apply the concept of vulnerability to three kinds of coastal hazard: tsunami, hurricanes, and sea level rise. We will also discuss policies in relation to those hazards. While tsunami and hurricane hazards are short-term hazards that exist few hours to several days, sea level rise is a medium- to long-term hazard that shows its impacts slowly over decades. We will discuss tsunami and hurricane hazards, the two short-term hazards in the next module, and discuss sea level rise, the medium- to long-term hazard, in the following module.

Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson 10 tasks!

You have reached the end of Module 10! Double-check the to-do list in the Lesson 10 Roadmap to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Module 11.

References and Further Reading

Frazier, T. G., N. Wood, B. Yarnal, and D. H. Bauer. 2010. Influence of potential sea level rise on societal vulnerability to hurricane storm-surge hazards, Sarasota County, Florida. Applied Geography 30 (4):490–505.

Polsky, C., R. Neff, and B. Yarnal. 2007. Building comparable global change vulnerability assessments: the vulnerability scoping diagram. Global Environmental Change 17 (3):472–485.

Yarnal, B. 2007. Vulnerability and all that jazz: Addressing vulnerability in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Technology in Society 29 (2):249–255.