Exposed or vulnerable?

There’s a difference. Let’s talk about it.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Let’s talk about climate resilience. More specifically, let’s talk about resilience terminology. I want to get to the concepts of exposure and vulnerability — two key concepts that help determine if someone (or something) might become more resilient to an impact, a hazard, or just about anything that may happen to them.

A lot of people get these two concepts confused. To be honest, I’ve sometimes found myself interchanging the terms. But I’ve forced myself to get over that, because the difference between them is crucial.

It’s important to understand that just because you’re exposed to something, it doesn’t make you vulnerable to it.

Let’s parse this out.

Have you been in the presence of a hazard? For example, has someone with a cold sneezed on you? This is exposure:

Ewwww. A sneeze/cough. Now you’re exposed.

You’ve been exposed. But how sensitive are you? Would getting the cold put your life in jeopardy because your immune system is compromised? Or are you healthy, a superwo(man)? This is sensitivity:

A newborn, whose immune system doesn’t mature for two or three months, is more sensitive to getting sneezed on than older children. Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash.

When you add these terms together, you get something we call potential impact.

Exposure + Sensitivity = Potential Impact

This term gets to the degree of how much a threat or hazard may impact something. But that doesn’t mean you’re vulnerable, because we still need to add to that equation your ability to cope with this impact.

So…do you have the ability to cope to this hazard or threat? Do you have resources at your disposal to help you? Are you prepared to stay home, drink hot tea, watch Netflix, and have the ability to pay for and take some cold medicine? This is adaptive capacity:

If you can afford to buy and take medicine for your cold, you’re increasing your adaptive capacity. Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash.

Bringing it all back home—if someone who has a cold sneezes on you, does that make you vulnerable? It’s hard to know without knowing your adaptive capacity and your sensitivity. But you could definitely say you’ve been exposed.

This, however, is vulnerability:

An older hospitalized person is likely more vulnerable to being sneezed on than a younger person who’s not in the hospital. Image by rawpixel from Pixabay.

Maybe someone sneezed on you, and you’re this older person who is in the hospital and has a compromised immune system. We can say that you’re vulnerable because, in our vulnerability assessment, we’ve taken into account exposure, sensitivity, potential impact, and adaptive capacity.

In the field of resilience, we see people confusing the terms exposure and vulnerability all the time. I think this has something to do with how hard it can be to quantify sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Mapping exposure can be as simple as an overlay of an asset (your house) with a threat (a flood layer). And that can tell you a lot, especially if you don’t have a GIS staff person or the time to complete a full-blown vulnerability and risk assessment. Knowing your exposure can at least help you plan to get out of harm’s way. That’s important.

But I’m hoping that adaptation professionals and others who are leading the way in planning for and reacting to climate threats won’t stop there. If you can, take the time to understand the differences and nuances between these essential and foundational terms that make up resilience and apply them to your work.

We may be doing a disservice to our clients—and to our fellow citizens—if we don’t set a standard for these terms and all use them in the same way as we plan for future change.