Social vulnerability to coastal hazards in South-east Asia: A synthesis of research insights

Several decades of research on natural hazards have produced a large range of insights on the complex and interacting factors contributing to hazard vulnerability. Despite these insights and the efforts of the disaster risk reduction and humanitarian communities, reducing vulnerability to coastal hazards remains a challenge facing many communities worldwide and particularly in South-east Asia. This chapter presents preliminary findings of a comprehensive and systematic analysis of 128 peer-reviewed scientific articles, focusing on causal factors and structures of social vulnerability to coastal hazards and the key recommendations put forward for reducing vulnerability. The review presents findings from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. A meta-analysis methodology is applied and includes the development of a coding system, statistical characterization and synthesis. The analysis is restricted to peerreviewed journal articles and is based on a review of the main conceptual frameworks on hazard vulnerability. A total of 336 causal factors and 227 recommendations are identified and categorized, and their interrelationships analysed. There are several key findings. First, there is a clear gap between the conceptual/theoretical literature and the empirical case studies; few case studies refer to or apply a particular conceptual framework for analysing hazard vulnerability. Second, generalized patterns or causal structures of vulnerability can be established. However, a multitude of factors interact in complicated ways and at multiple scales and interpretations of their interactions to produce hazard vulnerability are different in different environmental, historical and social contexts. Third, there are considerable mismatches between the identified vulnerability factors and the recommendations for vulnerability reduction.