Uncertainty

[Stefania]

Hello,

I would like to start a discussion here, this will be in the context
of dealing with uncertainty: What could be the function of the FVI in
the context of risk management and dealing with uncertainty?

The bests,

[Ameen Benjamin]

Stafinia,

Your question w.r.t what the function of the FVI could be
necessitates another question to answer yours. That is,
within the context of risk management, what do we understand
vulnerability to be? There has been some writings on this question,
and I would like to invite Ilan Kellman to perhaps take this
discussion
further.

Regards

[Stefania]

Ameen,

The definition of vulnerability depends of different areas of
research, different one in biology, sociology or/and in technical
sciences.
My definition on vulnerability can be find on: www.unesco-ihe-fvi.org
Of course that I am very interested into the topic and I would like to
hear other opinions.
Ilan Kellman is very welcome to do it, either is the definition or its
context to uncertainty.

My regards,

[Ameen Benjamin]

Stefania,

In a meagre attempt to trace the various disciplinary influences on
disaster risk
studies, in an unpublished dissertation (Benjamin, 2008), I was able
to indicate how disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, medical,
natural and technical sciences all influenced our understanding of
risk. It was indicated that,as you said, different disciplines had
their unique understanding of vulnerability.

However, as mentioned in my previous comment, the context of
vulnerability is discussed here specifically in the context of
DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT (DRM). In the above reference it was pointed
out that despite the different disciplinary definitions for
vulnerability, within the context of DRM the following interrelated
variables are consistent in any definition of vulnerability:
a) environmental,
b) social,
c) economic,
d) demographic, and
e) political variables.

It is these variables therefore which should inform the function of
the FVI.

Your definition for vulnerability (as per your reference below), that
is V = Exposure + Susceptibility - Resilience, differs slightly to a
more thorough analytical definition of vulnerability by Pelling
(2003). Where Human Vulnerability = Exposure (location relative to
hazard; Environmental surroundings); Resistance (livelihood, health);
Resilience (Adjustments, preparations).

Wisely, Pelling's model for Vulnerability does not include whether the
relationship is a linear or exponential relationship. This may be
because the quantification of vulnerability is a much debated topic
(Wisner et al, 2004; Benjamin, 2008).

Regards.

> > > The bests,- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Ilan Kelman]

Dear All,

Thanks so much for this discussion. Fundamentally, my view of the definition of vulnerability is "Pick a definition, be clear about it, and move forward". Having said that, I can offer several publications where I discuss aspects about "vulnerability" debates which I think are appropriate and those which I think are inappropriate:

A peer reviewed paper http://www.acme-journal.org/vol9/LewisKelman10.pdf

A newsletter article https://wiki.ucar.edu/download/attachments/10223843/DefiningRisk.pdf

An academic poster on weather disasters http://www.ilankelman.org/articles1/ams2008poster.pdf

Non-peer reviewed summaries and analyses of academic work http://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/vulnres.pdf and http://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/vulnrescritique.pdf
 
Please note that none of what I promote regarding vulnerability was linked to the definition of vulnerability used in my own PhD on flood vulnerability http://www.ilankelman.org/phd.html  Part of the reason is that the focus of my PhD was not on vulnerability definitions, so at the time, I was not as aware of the literature as I am now.  Part of the reason is that the focus of my PhD was not on vulnerability definitions, so I picked a definition, was clear about it, and moved forward.
 
Today, I see elements of vulnerability that I think should always be included:  vulnerability as a long-term process, vulnerability as contextual (e.g. vulnerability to what?), vulnerability as subjective, and vulnerability as qualitative. If one needs a number or index for vulnerability (then we could ask "why?"), these characteristics cannot fully apply.
 
I enjoy the definitional discussions and I see them as being important. But sometimes, you need a narrow definition and that still yields legitimate research, policy, and practice. Sometimes, however, the narrow definition does not yield legitimate research, policy, and practice. That is where we need to be careful and critical.
 
Does this help?
 
Ilan

[Stefania]

Dear Ilan,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.
I read your PhD thesis long time ago, let's say 2008, and I admire the
work you did, and to be more specifically the amount of data used was
impressive at such a small scale, but indeed as you tell I was not so
happy with the development of the vulnerability definitions :).
Anyway, I saw the peer review paper and I appreciate it.

Right now, I am writing my PhD thesis, is about flood vulnerability
index (FVI), a methodology developed in 2009, and applied to different
spatial scales, now even to district scale.
The main focus is the uncertainty within the FVI, (why an index? Flood
vulnerability assessment plays a key role in the area of risk
management. Create a readily understandable link between the
theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day
decision-making process and to encapsulate this link in an easily
accessible tool.)

Going back to uncertainty, I can say that one of the most important
uncertainties in flood risk management is variability in nature. If
floods always occurred on the same time and with the same magnitude,
they would be better manageable. The uncertainties of the current
system, there are even more uncertainties on how the/that system will
behave in the future?

Once again thank you very much and the review paper made my day ;),

Sincerely

On Jan 27, 3:42 pm, Ilan Kelman <ilan_kel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Thanks so much for this discussion. Fundamentally, my view of the definition of vulnerability is "Pick a definition, be clear about it, and move forward". Having said that, I can offer several publications where I discuss aspects about "vulnerability" debates which I think are appropriate and those which I think are inappropriate:
>
> A peer reviewed paperhttp://www.acme-journal.org/vol9/LewisKelman10.pdf
>

> A newsletter articlehttps://wiki.ucar.edu/download/attachments/10223843/DefiningRisk.pdf
>
> An academic poster on weather disastershttp://www.ilankelman.org/articles1/ams2008poster.pdf
>
> Non-peer reviewed summaries and analyses of academic workhttp://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/vulnres.pdfandhttp://www.islandvulnerability.org/docs/vulnrescritique.pdf
>
> Please note that none of what I promote regarding vulnerability was linked to the definition of vulnerability used in my own PhD on flood vulnerabilityhttp://www.ilankelman.org/phd.html Part of the reason is that the focus of my PhD was not on vulnerability definitions, so at the time, I was not as aware of the literature as I am now.  Part of the reason is that the focus of my PhD was not on vulnerability definitions, so I picked a definition, was clear about it, and moved forward.

[Ilan Kelman]

Dear Stefania,
 
I and the others on this list very much look forward to your improvements of operationalising uncertainty within a vulnerability index. For my PhD and subsequent work, I operationalised uncertainty by putting error bars on input parameters and conducting a sensitivity analysis to see how much the errors would affect the output. Then, the final output either included error bars or was deliberately made less precise in order to encompass the error. That is a very engineering approach and there are so many other ways to do it, from Bayesian Belief Networks to more qualitative approaches. So please do better than the inadequacies in my work and I look forward to learning from it!
 
With thanks and warmest regards,
 
Ilan
 
> Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:45:51 -0800
> Subject: [FVI GG] Re: Uncertainty and Vulnerability
> From: stefan...@gmail.com
> To: flood-vulner...@googlegroups.com