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Vulnerability, risk and resilience: Towards a conceptual framework25Threat to urban Risk Response Outcomesafety and securityCrime and violence Specific risky events are the various Responses may include more effective criminal justice Key outcomes include loss of assets, injury,types of crime and violence, such as systems, improved surveillance, community policing, death, damage to property, emotional/burglary, assault, rape, homicide and better design of public/open spaces and transport psychological suffering orterrorist attacks. systems, improved employment for youth, development stress, fear, and reduced urban investment.of gated communities, and provision of privatesecurity services.Tenure insecurity and Specific risky event is forced eviction, Examples of risk responses at the individual and household Outcomes include homelessness, loss offorced eviction while risky socio-economic processes levels include informal savings and social networks, and assets, loss of income and sources ofand factors include poverty, social political organization to resist forced eviction and to livelihood. May also include physical injuryexclusion, discriminatory inheritance advocate for protection of human rights. At the or death if eviction process is violent.laws, ineffective land policies, as well as institutional level, responses include more effective landlack of planning and protection of policies and urban planning, as well as housing rightshuman rights.legislation.Natural and human- Specific risky events (or hazards) Examples of major responses include ex ante measures Key outcomes may include physical injury,made/technological include floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, such as more effective spatial design of cities and the loss of income and assets, damage todisasters volcanic eruptions, technological design of individual buildings, as well as home insurance; buildings and infrastructure, as well asdisasters and war. and ex post measures such as emergency response emotional/psychological stress.systems, reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure,as well as rehabilitation of institutions in war-torn countries.Table 2.1Vulnerability as aconceptual framework:Risk, response andoutcomeevents, the impacts or outcomes of risky events, as well asresponses to risky events at various levels. Within thecontext of this report, risk refers to both risky events (suchas natural and human-made disasters), as well as risky socioeconomicprocesses (such as crime, violence and the kind ofsocial exclusion that leads to tenure insecurity and forcedeviction). Outcomes of risky events and processes are theundesirable consequences of crime and violence (such asloss of assets, injury and death), of tenure insecurity andforced eviction (such as homelessness and loss of livelihoods),as well as of natural and human-made disasters (suchas injury, death and damage to property and infrastructure).The chapters in Parts II, III and IV discuss the nature andglobal incidence of the major risky events, or threats tourban safety and security, addressed in this report. Thechapters also discuss the impacts or outcomes of (as well asthe responses to) these major threats or risks. Table 2.1 is aschematic representation of how the concept of vulnerabilityis used in this report as an analytical framework.Human life is inherently vulnerable and susceptible toa wide range of risks or hazards that can threaten urbansafety at the individual, household, community or neighbourhood,city and national levels. While the sources of humanvulnerability are multiple, they can essentially be dividedinto three broad categories:• The first category includes chronic vulnerabilities associatedwith biological necessities such as food, water,shelter and health. People must have these needs metto some minimal degree in order to survive. Significantdisruptions to satisfying these needs can result in illhealth and death. In many cases, these vulnerabilitiesare persistent and of a long-term nature.• The second category includes contextual vulnerabilitiesarising from the social, economic, political and environmentalcontexts of human life, including the density ofinteractions between and among people, whichsurround the life of one individual. These can includeharm from ethnic violence, loss of income and employmentdue to deindustrialization, drug-induced crime, orunjust policies of government to bulldoze slums,thereby increasing insecurity of tenure. While thesevulnerabilities are the consequences of contextualprocesses, they may take the form of infrequentincidents or events.• A third category includes vulnerability from majorunusual, but periodic, events such as natural or humanmadedisasters, including hurricanes, earthquakes orwars. They are distinguished from the second categoryby their magnitude and depth of impact. As suggestedin the introduction to Part IV, they are notable by theirscale of loss, which exceeds the resilience, oroverwhelms the ability, of a household, community orcity to cope.Assessments of threats to urban safety and security mustinclude all three categories and, indeed, some are interdependent,such as satisfaction of basic needs requiringincome and employment to sustain access to those services.The key distinction here, however, is between underlyingchronic conditions resulting from the level of developmentand per capita income of countries and the frequency ofeither minor or major significant or catastrophic events thatoccur with low probabilities in the same locations.Analytically, the conceptual frameworks for these categorieshave been traditionally distinct, although experience,especially with the application of the vulnerability framework,demonstrates that they are increasingly interactive. Anexample is that many communities face land tenure conflictsin their recovery from disasters (see Box 2.1). A tenureinsecurity problem, such as forced eviction, may result inserious violence, while a natural disaster may result in crimeand a general breakdown of law and order.It is now understood that the extent of the impact ofcatastrophic events depends upon the presence and force ofchronic underlying conditions. In this sense, in many(although not all) cases, these events may be more of aprocess than an event. A clear example is the performance ofinfrastructure during a disaster since this is a strong indicatorof institutional capacity, as is the maintenance of order byThe extent of theimpact ofcatastrophic eventsdepends upon thepresence and forceof chronic underlyingconditions