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The development of appropriate risk and vulnerability reduction strategies to cope with tsunami risks is a major challenge for countries, regions, and cities exposed to potential tsunamis. European coastal cities such as Cadiz are exposed to tsunami risks. However, most official risk reduction strategies as well as the local population are not aware of the probability of such a phenomenon and the potential threat that tsunami waves could pose to their littoral. This paper outlines how tsunami risks, and particularly tsunami vulnerability, could be assessed and measured. To achieve this, a vulnerability assessment framework was applied focusing on the city of Cadiz as a case study in order to highlight the practical use and the challenges and gaps such an assessment has to deal with. The findings yield important information that could assist with the systematic improvement of societal response capacities of cities and their inhabitants to potential tsunami risks. Hazard and vulnerability maps were developed, and qualitative data was obtained through, for example, focused group discussions. The findings of the paper are based on research conducted within the framework of the European Commission funded project TRANSFER (Tsunami Risk and Strategies For the European Region), a project that aims to improve the understanding of tsunami processes in the Euro-Mediterranean region, to develop methods and tools to assess vulnerability and risk, and to identify strategies for the reduction of tsunami risks.

Vulnerability science is the multi-disciplinary integration of social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering in understanding those circumstances that place people and places at risk from hazards and those factors that enhance or reduce the ability of the population, physical systems, or infrastructure to respond to and recover from environmental threats. To integrate the perspectives requires place-based analyses using geospatial tools and technologies. This paper describes tools and methods for measuring and mapping exposure (termed physical vulnerability); measuring and mapping the sensitivity of populations to hazards (termed social vulnerability); and the intersection of the two to create the place-based analyses. The intersection of physical vulnerability and social vulnerability creates the hazardscape, which in turn helps researchers understand the differential impacts of hazards and disasters on local places and the people who live there.

This paper discusses the bases of theory in the evaluation of social vulnerability to disasters. Vulnerability is shown to be the vital component of risk and the principal element of disaster impacts. Perception is a key process in decision making in disasters. It is affected by culture and symbolism, which are analyzed in the context of disaster risk. A model of cultural metamorphosis is used to explain changes and discrepancies in attitudes to disaster and recovery processes. The response to the L’Aquila (central Italy) earthquake of 6 April 2009 is discussed as an illustration of processes of cultural metamorphosis and symbolic interpretation of disasters. The response was influenced by both modern and inherited cultural traits, which can be identified and analyzed in order to explain public reactions to the event. A new model is proposed in which culture and history combine with physical hazards to influence vulnerability.

This paper, in the form of an essay, discusses the potentialities and limits of the concept of vulnerability concerning the integrated analysis of social and environmental problems. It focuses on two perspectives. The first one derives from post-normal science, considered as a new epistemological and methodological basis for the analysis and management of complex environmental problems. For this purpose, we analyze the concept of vulnerability within the context of four phenomenal worlds, each with increasing levels of complexity: the world of the physicalist sciences, the world of biological life, the world of life from the perspective of biomedicine and public health, and finally, the emerging and reflective human world. The second perspective includes contributions by authors involved in both theoretical discussion and activism related to environmental justice movements, especially within the Brazilian Network for Environmental Justice.

This paper presents a new model of analysis of social vulnerability to natural and technological hazards. The index used in this analysis allows us to structure vulnerability assessment in two dimensions: the vulnerabilities of populations and communities (criticality), and territorial vulnerability (support capacity), which reflect the biophysical exposure or vulnerability, social resilience, and infrastructural support capacity. This new social vulnerability index is applied within the territorial system of mainland Portugal, based on the municipal and sub-municipal scale, considering the social resilience of individuals, groups, and communities to extreme events.The obtained results highlight the decisive role of the used scale in the analysis of processes related to social vulnerability. We suggest that mapping the more vulnerable areas and groups, as well as identifying triggering factors, can be a relevant contribution for land-use development and planning programs designed to mitigate territorial risks and vulnerabilities.