InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society > Student Materials > Section 4: Society and Policy Making > Module 10: Understanding and assessing coastal vulnerabilities > Summary and Final Tasks
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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These student materials complement the Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society Instructor Materials. If you would like your students to have access to the student materials, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing InTeGrate teaching materials.
Initial Publication Date: December 7, 2016

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.


These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »