Susan L. Cutter

Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards

County-level socioeconomic and demographic data were used to construct an index of social vulnerability to environmental hazards, called the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) for the United States based on 1990 data. Copyright (c) 2003 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.

Revealing the Vulnerability of People and Places: A Case Study of Georgetown County, South Carolina

Losses from environmental hazards have escalated in the past decade, prompting a reorientation of emergency management systems away from simple postevent response. There is a noticeable change in policy, with more emphasis on loss reduction through mitigation, preparedness, and recovery programs. Effective mitigation of losses from hazards requires hazard identification, an assessment of all the hazards likely to affect a given place, and risk-reduction measures that are compatible across a multitude of hazards. The degree to which populations are vulnerable to hazards, however, is not solely dependent upon proximity to the source of the threat or the physical nature of the hazard –social factors also play a significant role in determining vulnerability. This paper presents a method for assessing vulnerability in spatial terms using both biophysical and social indicators. A geographic information system was utilized to establish areas of vulnerability based upon twelve environmental threats and eight social characteristics for our study area, Georgetown County, South Carolina. Our results suggest that the most biophysically vulnerable places do not always spatially intersect with the most vulnerable populations. This is an important finding because it reflects the likely ‘social costs’ of hazards on the region. While economic losses might be large in areas of high biophysical risk, the resident population also may have greater safety nets (insurance, additional financial resources) to absorb and recover from the loss quickly. Conversely, it would take only a moderate hazard event to disrupt the well-being of the majority of county residents (who are more socially vulnerable, but perhaps do not reside in the highest areas of biophysical risks) and retard their longer-term recovery from disasters. This paper advances our theoretical and conceptual understanding of the spatial dimensions of vulnerability. It further highlights the merger of conceptualizations of human environment relationships with geographical techniques in understanding contemporary public policy issues.

Temporal and spatial changes in social vulnerability to natural hazards

During the past four decades (1960–2000), the United States experienced major transformations in population size, development patterns, economic conditions, and social characteristics. These social, economic, and built-environment changes altered the American hazardscape in profound ways, with more people living in high-hazard areas than ever before. To improve emergency management, it is important to recognize the variability in the vulnerable populations exposed to hazards and to develop place-based emergency plans accordingly. The concept of social vulnerability identifies sensitive populations that may be less likely to respond to, cope with, and recover from a natural disaster. Social vulnerability is complex and dynamic, changing over space and through time. This paper presents empirical evidence on the spatial and temporal patterns in social vulnerability in the United States from 1960 to the present. Using counties as our study unit, we found that those components that consistently increased social vulnerability for all time periods were density (urban), race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The spatial patterning of social vulnerability, although initially concentrated in certain geographic regions, has become more dispersed over time. The national trend shows a steady reduction in social vulnerability, but there is considerable regional variability, with many counties increasing in social vulnerability during the past five decades.

The Vulnerability of Science and the Science of Vulnerability

Abstract The events of September 11th shocked the nation and painfully illustrated our vulnerability to international terrorist attacks. Despite some of the most sophisticated models, monitoring systems, and science in the world, officials were unable to anticipate and predict these cascading events. The collective scientific ability to geographically represent environmental threats, map exposures, and map consequences is relatively straightforward when the threats are recognized. But what happens when we cannot recognize threats or some of their unintended consequences? This article examines the twin issues of the inadequacies in our current modes of understanding (the vulnerability of science) and the need for more integrative approaches in understanding and responding to environmental hazards (vulnerability science).

Race, class and environmental justice

The growth of the environmental justice movement in the USA surprised even the most seasoned of policy-makers by its speed and the magnitude of its impact on USA national policy (Russell, 1989; Inhaber, 1990; Grossman, 1991; Goldman, 1992). Responding to intense public pressure from environmental and civil-rights activists for close to a decade, the USEPA established an Environmental Equity Workgroup in 1990. The workgroup had two primary tasks: 1) to evaluate the evidence that racial minority and low-income groups bore a disproportionate burden of environmental risks; and 2) to identify factors that contributed to different risk burdens and to suggest strategies for improvement. In 1992 their signature report was released (USEPA, 1992a), partially reaffirming earlier studies that found a strong correlation between the location of commercial hazardouswaste facilities in communities and the percentage of minority residents in those same communities. By February 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, requiring every federal agency to achieve the principle of environmental justice by addressing and ameliorating the human health or environmental effects of the agency’s programmes, policies and activities on minority and low-income populations in the US (Bullard, 1994a). How much of the new policy is based on solid evidence of discrimination and how much is a direct response to the pressure-politics activist groups? This progress report reviews some of the recent literature on environmental equity and the empirical evidence supporting claims of environmental injustice in the USA. While the review focuses on the North American experience, the issue of environmental justice in other regions will intensify in the years to come as nations implement international accords for sustainable development.

Crying wolf: Repeat responses to hurricane evacuation orders

This article examines the evacuation behavior of residents in two South Carolina communities, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach, during the 1996 hurricane season. Two hurricanes that approached South Carolina but hit in North Carolina allowed us to study the impact of repeated “false alarms”; (evacuations ordered based on expectations of a hurricane landfall that proved to be wrong). Differences in evacuation behavior, specific information and concerns prompting evacuation, and the reliability of information sources between hurricane events are examined to determine the impact of false alarms on the credibility of warning systems. Data were derived from a face‐to‐face survey of residents 2 weeks after Hurricane Fran in September 1996. We found that the role of official advisories was more limited than reported in previous research as people sought information on more diverse sets of concerns in their decision making. Reliance on the media and the Weather Channel, in particular, for storm characteristics and ad...

Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative

pled with the increasing frequency of billion-dollar disaster events, such as the recent Hurricane Sandy, highlight some of the challenges to hazards and disaster policy in the United States. American society is also facing challenges to its economic, sociocultural, and environmental systems: The national jobless rate is near historic high values, more than one in six Americans now live in poverty, population migration to the coastal communities continues, and environmental degradation due to development, farming practices, or industrial processes and accidents continues to degrade natural defenses against floods, storm surge, and wildfires. Many of these changes are transformative and long lasting and, coupled with the nation’s inability to act decisively to counteract climate change, portend a future where we are more vulnerable to hazards at multiple scales. Extreme natural events (either unprecedented magnitudes or intensities of natural hazards or the unprecedented consequences of more routine hazards) may become normal occurrences under changing climatic conditions or changes in economic circumstances and social conditions.1,2 Low-probability/high-consequence events and highly improbable ones like earthquakes, pandemics, and other kinds of hazards take on more policy interest as these events become more probable.3-5 From a policy perspective, these unlikely events pose significant risk management challenges, starting with how to encourage investments to lessen the impacts of these disasters (Figure 1). by Susan L. Cutter, Joseph A. Ahearn, Bernard Amadei, Patrick Crawford, Elizabeth A. Eide, Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., Michael F. Goodchild, Howard C. Kunreuther, Meredith Li-Vollmer, Monica Schoch-Spana, Susan C. Scrimshaw, Ellis M. Stanley, Sr., Gene Whitney, and Mary Lou Zoback

Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe: The Changing Face of Vulnerability along the Hurricane Coasts:

The social vulnerability of the American population is not evenly distributed among social groups or between places. Some regions may be more susceptible to the impacts of hazards than other places based on the characteristics of the people residing within them. As we saw with Hurricane Katrina, when coupled with residencies in high-risk areas such as the hurricane coasts, differential vulnerabilities can lead to catastrophic results. The geographic discrepancies in social vulnerability also necessitate different mitigation, post-response, and recovery actions. Given temporal and spatial changes in social vulnerability in the future, a one-size-fits-all approach to preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation may be the least effective in reducing vulnerability or improving local resilience to hazards.

Erosion Hazard Vulnerability of US Coastal Counties

Abstract This article examines the vulnerability of US coastal counties to erosion by combining a socioeconomic vulnerability index with the US Geological Surveys physically based coastal vulnerability index. The end product is a county-based index of overall coastal place vulnerability. The results indicate that place vulnerability along the coast is highly differentiated and influenced by a range of social, economic, and physical indicators. Regionally, Gulf Coast vulnerability is more of a product of social characteristics rather than physical attributes. The opposite is true of Pacific and Atlantic coastal counties, where physical characteristics are more influential in determining erosion-hazard vulnerability. It is clear that overall vulnerability of coastal counties cannot be determined without the union of social, economic, built-environment, and physical characteristics. Yet the methods for combining these components are not widely used at present by coastal scientists and policy makers, rendering hazards assessments incomplete and mitigation plans untenable for many places.

GI Science, Disasters, and Emergency Management

Societal responses to disasters begin with the initial post-event rescue and relief operations, followed by recovery, reconstruction, and then transcend into mitigation actions including the development of pre-impact preparedness measures, collectively known as the emergency response cycle. This paper highlights some of the applications of GI Science to the emergency response cycle, citing examples from natural hazards and from the World Trade Center disaster on 11th September 2001. More importantly, the paper describes some of the constraints on the utilization of GI Science by the practitioner community: understandable user interfaces; data quantity, quality, and integration; real-time data and information. Finally, the paper suggests some important GI Science research areas based on the needs of the disasters and emergency management research and practitioner communities.