Index for Risk Management: Vulnerability index

The main focus of humanitarian organizations is people, which is the element at risk contemplated in the INFORM Risk composite index. The impact of disasters on people in terms of number of people killed, injured, and made homeless is predominantly felt in developing countries while the economic costs of disasters are concentrated in the industrialized world. The Vulnerability dimension addresses the intrinsic predispositions of an exposed population to be affected, or to be susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard, even though the assessment is made through hazard independent indicators. So, the vulnerability dimension represents economic, political and social characteristics of the community that can be destabilized in case of a hazard event. Physical vulnerability, which is a hazard dependent characteristic, is dealt with separately in the hazard & exposure dimension.

There are two categories aggregated through the geometric average, socio-economic vulnerability and vulnerable groups. The indicators used in each category are different in time variability and the social groups considered in each category are the target of different humanitarian organizations. If the first category refers more to the demography of a country in general, the vulnerable group category captures social groups with limited access to social and health care systems.