Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe ... - MemoFin.fr

IntroductionThe term risk is also interpreted in different ways(Coburn et al., 1994; Adams, 1995; Cardona, 2003).It is not defined in the IPCC AR4 even though it isused occasionally. The risk concept most relevantin the present context, which is sometimes referredto as disaster risk or outcome risk, is defined as'expected losses […] due to a particular hazard for agiven area and reference period' (UNDHA, 1993).A key aspect of the approach applied by the disasterrisk community is the clear distinction betweentwo factors that determine the risk to a particularsystem: the hazard, which is a 'potentially damagingphysical event, phenomenon or human activitycharacterised by its location, intensity, frequency andprobability', and the vulnerability, which denotesthe 'relationship between the severity of hazardand the degree of damage caused' to an exposedelement (UNDHA, 1993; Coburn et al., 1994; UnitedNations, 2004). If a risk assessment considers severalpotentially exposed elements in different locations,their differential exposure to hazards has to beconsidered as well (see Figure 1.3).It has been argued that the indicators used fordetermining vulnerability in the disaster risk contextare often in practice quite similar to those describingthe 'sensitivity' of the system's components toclimatic stimuli in the climate change community,and that vulnerability in the climate changecommunity is sometimes used similar to risk inthe disaster risk community (Costa and Kropp,2012). Note also that in practice there appear to befew systematic differences between national-levelclimate change assessments denoted as vulnerabilityand risk assessments, such as those in Germany(Zebisch et al., 2005), Austria (Balas et al., 2010), theUnited Kingdom (Defra, 2012), and Switzerland(Holthausen et al., 2011).The vulnerability concept of the disaster riskcommunity has been applied in this report in thesection on transport (Section 4.6) and generally alsoin the section on cities and urban areas (Section 5.4).The definition of vulnerability in the public healthcommunity is closely related to that of the disasterrisk community. It emphasises characteristics of apopulation group (such as age, gender, nutritionalstatus and pre-existing diseases) that determine theirsusceptibility to a specific health hazard (Stafoggiaet al., 2006). In this report it has been applied in thesection on human health (Section 4.4).1.7.4 Partial integration of both approaches in theIPCC SREXFigure 1.3HazardThe concepts of risk, hazard andvulnerability in the risk-hazardframeworkQualified by intensityand probabilityHazard potentialVulnerabilityExposed elementsSusceptibilityCoping capacityRiskThe IPCC recently published the Special ReportSREX (IPCC, 2012), which focuses on theinterconnections between extreme weather events,climate change and disasters. This report no longeruses the vulnerability definition of the IPCC AR4but follows largely the concept of vulnerabilityas understood by the disaster risk community:'Vulnerability is defined generically in this reportas the propensity or predisposition to be adverselyaffected. Such predisposition constitutes an internalcharacteristic of the affected element. In the field ofdisaster risk, this includes the characteristics of aperson or group and their situation that influencestheir capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist,and recover from the adverse effects of physicalevents.' (IPCC, 2012). However, the SREX expandsexisting concepts of the disaster risk community byemphasising how climate change and developmentcan affect both the climatic hazards that a system orcommunity is exposed to as well as its vulnerability(see Figure 1.4).Note:The exposure of various elements is shown here aspart of the vulnerability of the group of elementsbut exposure assessment may also be regarded asseparate from vulnerability assessment (as shown inFigure 1.4).Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 201247