Vulnerability is a central component of risk, shaping the extent to which individuals or other elements at risk are affected by climate hazards such as floods, storms, wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves. The research on physical, social and environmental aspects of vulnerability is advancing rapidly to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. Vulnerability research progresses especially by widening the scope of definitions, addressing constant evolution (i.e., spatial and temporal dynamics), and assessing shifts across multiple interacting hazards and contexts. Recent efforts demonstrate potential by integrating local and community-scale drivers, taking advantage of data and methods interoperability, and filling in some of the substantive gaps in social, behavioural, engineering, and contextual information. However, the growing complexity of managing multiple domains, scales, and disciplines makes holistic perspectives difficult to achieve.
Given these challenges and the fertile research being developed in the field, it is timely to call for contributions on vulnerability in the Anthropocene. This session welcomes work focusing on:
- Concepts and frameworks capturing the multidimensional and dynamic nature of vulnerability.
- Interdisciplinary and mixed-method approaches fostering exchange across fields and that integrate academic and non-academic knowledge.
- Methods that integrate vulnerability to multiple social sectors (e.g., economy, health), different drivers (e.g., poverty, gender, ethnic segregation, among others) and interactions between spatial scales (e.g. local, regional).
- General interdisciplinary vulnerability conceptualisations, fostering exchange between academic disciplines and mixed methods studies.
- Reviews, knowledge synthesis, and systematic mapping of vulnerability and vulnerability drivers that generally support improved climatic vulnerability assessment.
- Data management and interoperability methods that expand the use of existing datasets or allow for filling the gaps in the characterisation of vulnerability drivers.
- Climate adaptation studies focusing on addressing climatic vulnerability drivers (e.g., poverty, gender, ethnic segregation, among others).
- Vulnerability dynamics assessments across the disaster cycle (preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery), including process-based recovery and resilience assessments that, for instance, account for state-dependent vulnerability of the built environment.