Towards Quantitative Assessment of Vulnerability, Resilience, and the Effects of Adaptation on Social-Environmental Systems
Nelson, Katherine Sarah
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2018-05-17
Abstract
There are several prominent gaps that continue to linger in vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity research. The most predominate of these gaps include: continued confusion about the conceptual links between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity (and sustainability), lack of an assessment framework that can account for the multi-scalar (through space and time) and dynamic processes related to all of these inter-dependent concepts, lack of secondary verification of measurements of the aforementioned concepts and determinants, and lack of quantitative analytical assessment of impacts of these concepts on outcomes to disrupted systems. The work presented herein endeavors to provide a solid conceptual framing on which to ground further analyses; a generic framework for evaluating adaptation options by integrating assessment of vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability over time; demonstrations of spatial analysis and modeling methods that may be applied in empirical analyses; and a case study that applies the aforementioned concepts, framework, and methods. This work provides a foundation on which to build a body of research on adaptation in social-environmental systems using a micro-scale lens and empirical methodologies. In addition, this work demonstrates ways in which spatial analysis and modeling may be applied in order to approach true validation of vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability indicators and, by association, conceptual understandings.