Rethinking Vulnerability Analysis and Governance with Emphasis on a Participatory Approach

Abstract

This article draws on vulnerability analysis as it emerged as a complement to classical risk analysis, and it aims at exploring its ability for nurturing risk and vulnerability governance actions. An analysis of the literature on vulnerability analysis allows us to formulate a three-fold critique: first, vulnerability analysis has been treated separately in the natural and the technological hazards fields. This separation prevents vulnerability from unleashing the full range of its potential, as it constrains appraisals into artificial categories and thus already closes down the outcomes of the analysis. Second, vulnerability analysis focused on assessment tools that are mainly quantitative, whereas qualitative appraisal is a key to assessing vulnerability in a comprehensive way and to informing policy making. Third, a systematic literature review of case studies reporting on participatory approaches to vulnerability analysis allows us to argue that participation has been important to address the above, but it remains too closed down in its approach and would benefit from embracing a more open, encompassing perspective. Therefore, we suggest rethinking vulnerability analysis as one part of a dynamic process between opening-up and closing-down strategies, in order to support a vulnerability governance framework.

A New Systematic Approach to Vulnerability Assessment of Innovation Capability of Construction Enterprises

“…Vulnerability research, as a new paradigm of sustainable development, uncertainty and risk, sheds light on how to best analyze the uncertainty of innovation capability. As an innovative method, SPA focuses on uncertainty and is widely applied in the economic and social fields [11,12,18,26,[111][112][113][114], and is combined with some common comprehensive methods, such as E-SPA and P-SPA [44,[100][101][102]. Innovation capability is an important driver of economic development and is closely linked to uncertainty and risk.…”

“…Instead, uncertainty keeps emerging in new forms accompanying complex scientific processes, organization structures, and technical systems. Strategies should be prepared at different levels of acceptance of uncertainty and be utilized to benefit social-economic developments [18]. Uncertainty is not a deficiency, but a structural feature embedded in any entrepreneurial entity.…”

“…Therefore, eliminating risks or identifying weaknesses is perhaps a preferred method of overcoming vulnerability. Elimination should, however, not simply lead to the avoidance of uncertainty when studying innovation capability, because uncertainty can sense or trace new directions or paths of economic development and thereby represents an innovative strength [18,19]. This new cognitive reasoning requires firms to treat uncertainty as part of innovation capability and develop a strategy to overcome it, or manage uncertainty instead of eliminating it.…”

“…Vulnerability research has a wide range of applications, including climate change prediction, natural disaster prevention, food security, and public health improvement [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Generally, innovation vulnerability relates to the risk or uncertainty of a company's innovation capability.…”

“How are you vulnerable?”: Using participation for vulnerability analysis in emergency planning

“…Second, Focus Groups capture 'the evolving relations among group members can be a stimulus for elaboration and expression' (Frey and Fontana 1993, 32), thus producing more data than could be gathered by individual interviews. Third, such a (Stirling 2008;Rossignol, Delvenne, and Turcanu, 2014). Indeed, the interviewer asks open-ended questions to stimulate the participants 'to explore the issues of importance to them, in their own vocabulary, generating their own questions and pursuing their own priorities' (Kitzinger 1995, 299), which allows the research to take unexpected directions.…”