European Disaster Volunteers

Affecting long term change means understanding and addressing the factors making a community vulnerable to disaster.

Those factors typically fall into one of three categories:

• Physical (material) vulnerability includes structural issues such as poorly constructed buildings and infrastructure.
• Motivational vulnerability considers how individuals and communities perceive themselves and their ability to cope with their environment and circumstances.
• Social (organisational) vulnerability involves how a community reacts to a crisis and cooperates for the common good.

Physical vulnerability is usually at the root of the most obvious damage we see when entering a disaster zone. Physically vulnerable communities will see large numbers of damaged or destroyed buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. These communities are also prone to larger losses of life.

As the effects of physical vulnerability are more visible than those of motivational or social vulnerability, they tend to draw the lion's share of the attention when aid is distributed. It is difficult to look past a building which has been gutted by a typhoon, but in a rush to rebuild that structure it becomes easy to overlook survivors’ social and motivational well being.

Motivational vulnerability boils down to the extent to which people perceive that they are strong and able to tackle their own problems, while social vulnerability looks at how well a community comes together to help its members in a time of crisis. Post-disaster, the importance of these social mechanisms cannot be overstated.

They are at the heart of local social support systems and, in the first few chaotic hours following a disaster, they are all survivors have. As recovery progresses, a united community of motivated survivors are better placed to secure the resources they need to rebuild and recover in the long term than a fragmented, demoralised group of individuals.

To affect long term change and leave communities more able to meet their own needs, we have to understand the factors which make a community vulnerable to disaster.

For example, programmes designed to meet the needs of a group which is is very community-oriented (thus not very socially vulnerable) but very poor (thus physically vulnerable), reconstruction would look very different to those designed for a relatively wealthy but socially- divided community. Both communities would be vulnerable to disaster but in different ways, and the projects to aid their long term recovery would need to reflect those differences.