Challenges of practicing nuanced vulnerability assessment

The panel focuses on how practitioners, policymakers and researchers can put into practice a nuanced vulnerability concept in disaster risk reduction and in the humanitarian and development sectors. Disasters and crises do not discriminate between people, but the structural conditions under which people live, do, and put certain groups of people at higher risk before, during and after disasters and crises (1). However, in disaster management policies and practice, the social side of vulnerability is often seen as an intrinsic and static characteristic of an individual or a group, eg. people with disabilities, the elderly, or those living in poverty (see Orru et al. 2021 for a European overview). The consequence is that we risk not reaching the people most in need and continue to leave ‘someone behind’ and do harm. Capturing the vulnerability as a dynamic characteristic of individuals and support structures, that make individuals and communities susceptible to negative consequences in given situations, including the inability to access adequate resources to anticipate and cope with hazards (Morsut et al. 2021), has raised methodological challenges such as the limitations in data accessibility, scale, resolution, representation of the people, and social contexts (Rufat et al. 2019). Further, researchers’ and practitioners’ understandings of social vulnerability remains elusive (Fekete et al. 2023).
The panel will present four novel and practical approaches to providing applicable ways of understanding and integrating a dynamic and nuanced approach to vulnerability.

We wish to discuss who is most in need in a disaster situation, and also in the time leading up to the disaster. Too often pre-determined categories are used that exlude some of the needy. This is recogised, but it is very dificut to implement a more nuanced approach. Why is that?