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3.2.4.      The role of vulnerability assessments

In considering climate change and its impacts on society and the environment it became clear in the climate change debate that the severity of impacts depended not only on the event extremity but also on the exposure and sensitivity of the affected systems (see also figure 3.3). Vulnerability was thus raised as a central concept in climate change policy through article 4.4 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and adaptation for vulnerable countries (UN 1992), and became a central theme in the ‘Climate Change 2007 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report’ (IPCC 2007). These documents evaluate key vulnerabilities to climate change and highlight the role of stresses. Vulnerability assessments and the indicators they provide are widely perceived as providing the preferred bridge between academic work and policy need - synthesising complex data into a single index that can be applied by policy makers and managers (Hinkel 2011). The recent IPCC special report on managing the risks of extreme events and disasters (IPCC 2012) exemplifies the standardised use of vulnerability assessments to a particular topic of risk, namely climate change. It moves beyond merely considering the direct risk to society from increased hazards towards considering how such events can affect vulnerability to future extremes by modifying the resilience and adaptive capacity of affected societal or ecological systems.