VULNERABILIT

Y, CAPACITY &
RESILIENCE
VULNERABILI
TY
“a set of prevailing or consequential
conditions, which adversely affect the
community’s ability to prevent, mitigate,
prepare for and respond to hazardous
events.”
(Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, 2006)
Vulnerability is related to how an
individual would likely behave in
case of disaster, and how their
weaknesses and lack of capacities
make them easily affected by
hazards.
 Several sectors in our society are
considered as
Most Vulnerable, Less Vulnerable, and
Not Vulnerable Sectors.
They are the community They are classified as
members whose weak and vulnerable and
capacities are low and not have been traditional
sufficient to withstand and victims of violations and
overcome the damaging consequently require
and harmful effects of special attention
disasters. MOST
VULNERABLE
SECTOR

They are the so-called abused

sector and at the lowest level
of society.
 MOST
VULNERABLE
SECTOR
They are the community members
whose capacities start from their own Their capacities are higher than
ability to acquire material resources; those in the most vulnerable
skills and trainings; and position in sector to overcome the adverse
society. effects of disasters.

LESS
VULNERABLE
SECTOR

Their role in disaster management

activities is to extend assistance
and support to the most
vulnerable sectors.
 They are the sectors in
society having a high
position in the community.

NOT
VULNERABLE
SECTOR
They do advocacy or charity for
the benefit of the most
vulnerable and less vulnerable
sectors during and after
disasters.
 CATEGORIES OF
VULNERABILITY
According to Anderson and Woodrow (1990), there
are three areas of vulnerability, which are the
following: physical/material, social/organizational,
and attitudinal/motivational vulnerability
PHYSICAL/MATERIAL
VULNERABILITY
 People who have been
marginalized in social, economic,
or political terms are vulnerable
to suffering from disasters

SOCIAL/
ORGANIZATIONAL
VULNERABILITY

Groups that are well organized

and have a commitment to their
members suffer less during
disasters
People who have low confidence in their ability to affect change or
who have “lost heart” and feel defeated by events they cannot
control are hit by disasters than those who have a sense of their
ability to bring the changes they desire.

ATTITUDINAL/
MOTIVATIONAL
VULNERABILITY
1. Juan lives in a far-flung area with a house made of light
materials. He has no means of going downtown except by
walking on the dirt road.
2. Because of the COVID, a policeman told Lita that she cannot sell
fish by going around the barangay. She is now thinking of
another means of livelihood as she cannot afford to rent a space
in the fish market.
3. John’s parents fight a lot making him not sure whether he will
enroll in college.
4. Jen is hesitant to apply for government office because she has
no connections to back her up.
5. Corona, a sixteen-year-old lady, went to the mall despite the
COVID scare. When asked by a police officer “Why?”, she
answered, “I might as well die from coronavirus than die of
boredom at home. We all die sooner or later anyways because
our health care is poor.”
To overcome our vulnerabilities, we must capacitate ourselves.

According to the United Nations International

Strategy for Disaster Reduction or UNISDR
(2009), capacity refers to “all the strengths,
attributes, and resources available within a
community, organization, or society that can
be used to achieve an agreed goal.”
Vulnerability is, among other things, the result
of a lack of capacity. Vulnerability is the opposite
of capacity (measures to reduce or cope with the
potential negative consequences) so that
increasing capacity means reducing
vulnerability, and high vulnerability means low
capacity (Cardona O.D. et. al, 2012).
Therefore, to reduce vulnerability, we need to
increase capacity.
adequate food sources adequate income
ownership of land and safe
location
and construction of home

EXAMPLES OF
CAPACITY
savings family and community
support system

local knowledge such as the enabling legislation and strong

responsive local government barangay hotline and evacuation plan community organizations
It is also essential to understand the community’s
coping capacity in relation to disaster.

Coping capacity is “the ability of people,

organizations, and systems, using available
skills and resources, to face and manage
adverse conditions, emergencies or disasters
(UNISDR 2009).”
 The community’s level of coping mechanisms and readiness determine the scope and
depth of disaster risk reduction.

Some of the strategies to achieve our coping capacity includes:

learning to swim as part of

attending trainings in first aid securing our homes water survival
 The community’s level of coping mechanisms and readiness determine the scope and
depth of disaster risk reduction.

Some of the strategies to achieve our coping capacity includes:

designing evacuation strategies establishment of early stockpiling of food/

warning systems emergency equipment
 Community members and groups have different vulnerabilities and capacities.
Strengthening the capacities of each community helps people to adapt easily and
become resilient to inevitable circumstances.

Resiliency is the ability of a system, community, or

society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb,
accommodate to, and recover from the effects of a
hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including
through the preservation and restoration of its
essential basic structures and functions.
“It’s not the strongest of a species that survive, nor the
most intelligent,
but the ones most resilient and responsive to change.”
-Charles Darwin
 DISASTER
RISK
Disasters are sometimes considered external shocks, but disaster risk
results from the complex interaction between development processes
that generate conditions of exposure, vulnerability and hazard.

Disaster risk- refers to the expectation value of

deaths, injuries, and property losses that would be
caused by a hazard. It tends to quantify/measure the
impact.
As the disaster risk model implies, the magnitude of the
disaster depends on:
1. the severity of the natural event
2. the quantity of exposure of the elements at risk which
includes lives and properties, and
3. vulnerability level or quality of exposure.

Thus, the model can be expressed as:

DISASTER RISK = Hazard x Exposure x Vulnerability

According to this formula, if one factor is missing, there is no risk. A simple scenario is
during a pandemic, even if there is a virus (the hazard), if the people will stay at home
(zero exposure) and remain healthy (zero vulnerability), there is no chance of acquiring
that virus (no disaster risk).
ACTIVITY 1. Examine the picture of the house below.
This house is a typical raised
house found in the lahar-affected
area in Pampanga. The frame of
the house including the
foundation is made from
reinforced concrete, with hollow-
block in-fill walls. The roof
system consists of a coco
lumber roof frame and
galvanized iron roofing material.
The partitions are constructed
from wooden materials. The
house was built with no formal
engineering or architectural
touch. It was designed and
constructed by a foreman.
There are seven persons living
inside the house which include:
the 34-year old old owner of the
house who is male and his 32
year old wife, their three children
aged 5, 3, and a 6-month old
infant, an 72 –year old male who
is bound to a wheelchair.

Most of the furnishing of the

house is mostly made of wooden
or plastic.
Directions: List down the different elements
vulnerable to the following:

1. Strong ground shaking due to an earthquake

2. A fire starting from the stove in the kitchen
3. Floods due to continuous and heavy rains
4. Strong winds from Signal 3 or stronger
typhoons
ACTIVITY 2. Complete the table by supplying words or
phrases for each given event.

DISASTER AREA HAZARD EXPOSED VULNERABI-

AFFECTED ELEMENTS LITY/
POTENTIAL
EFFECTS
EARTHQUAKE
TYPHOON
ACTIVITY 3. Select a disaster that you have experienced, then
accomplish the table below.

HAZARD EXPOSED VULNERABILITY TO STRATEGIES

(Identify the specific ELEMENTS THE HAZARD (Recommend
hazard(s) involved in (Enumerate the (Explain why the strategies that could
the disaster. exposed elements exposed elements have been taken to
affected by the were vulnerable to the minimize the
hazard) hazard) possibility of similar
disaster occurring in
the future).