Vulnerability is a central component of risk, shaping the extent to which individuals or other elements at risk are affected by natural hazards. It can be linked to single or multiple hazards, and is driven by a myriad of interacting factors, including shifting social, economic, and environmental conditions. Additionally, disadvantaged social groups such as ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, and women often carry a disproportional burden from natural hazards. As a result, assessing and addressing vulnerability have become increasingly complex tasks. It demands not only a holistic characterisation of the system under investigation but also an in-depth understanding of the root causes of vulnerability and their spatial and temporal dynamics. This integration of holism and depth has, nonetheless, proved overwhelming, with most studies accepting trade-offs, especially in the context of repeated disaster exposure, where recovery between events is not always possible.
This working group proposes highlighting the dynamic nature of vulnerability across all phases of disaster management and climate adaptation, thereby advancing its integration across disciplines in the climate and natural hazards fields.
Meet the team!
Alexandre Pereira Santos
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Mariana Madruga de Brito
Mariana Madruga de Brito is an interdisciplinary scientist working in the intersection of natural and social sciences. She leads the “Computational Social Sciences for Extreme Events” Group at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). Her research focuses on understanding interactions between humans and the environment. In 2025, we received the EGU Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists for her use of text data to monitor the socioeconomic impacts of extreme events across multiple sectors.
Sophie Buijs
Sophie Buijs is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on disaster recovery in multi-hazard contexts. In her work, she explores the use of innovative satellite-based data sources for dynamic vulnerability and exposure assessments in the context of disaster recovery, for both human- and environmental systems. This research contributes to multiple research projects, including the EO4Multi-Hazards project and the H2020 MYRIAD-EU project, which aims to induce a paradigm shift from a single-hazard oriented to a more holistic multi-hazard, multi-sector, systemic risk management and assessment. In addition, she studies business resilience under multiple shocks as a part of the BRIDGE project. Beyond her research, she serves as the Early Career Representative within the MYRIAD-EU consortium and actively promotes the empowerment and engagement of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) across research projects.
Martha Vogel
Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre