Assessing impacts and measuring physical
vulnerability
Measuring physical vulnerability is increasingly seen as an
effective step towards risk reduction and the promotion of a
culture of disaster resilience [7]. The Hyogo Framework for Action
also stresses the need to develop indicators of vulnerability as a
key activity, and underlines the fact that the impacts of disasters
on social, economic and environmental conditions must be
examined through such indicators. Since vulnerability is multidimensional,
dynamic in time, scale-dependent and site-specific,
different indicators are selected in different vulnerability
assessments studies.