Risk and Uncertainty: Moving from hazard vulnerability to disaster resilience
UNU-EHS and the Center for Development Research (ZEF) cordially invite you to the next lecture of the joint Risk and Uncertainty seminar series. Professor Susan Cutter
, University
of South Carolina,
will give a lecture on
"Moving
from Hazard Vulnerability to Disaster Resilience: The Experience from
Mississippi’s Gulf Coast". The lecture takes place on Thursday, 11 October 2012, 4:30 p.m. at ZEF (ground floor conference room).
Speaker:
Susan Cutter
(Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina)
Chair:
Fabrice Renaud
(Head of Section, UNU-EHS)
Discussant:
Joachim von
Braun
(ZEF-Director)
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: Risk and Uncertainty seminar series
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 provides a forum for agenda setting and discussion
on related themes with leading experts in this field of research and policy.
The lecture series
is coorganized by ZEF and the United Nations University (UNU) in Bonn.
