Imagining and assessing future risks: A dynamic scenario-base social vulnerability analysis framework for disaster planning and response

While social vulnerability assessments should play a crucial part in disaster management, there is a lack of assessment tools that retain sensitivity to the situation-specific dynamics of vulnerabilities emerging in particular hazard scenarios. We developed a novel scenario-based vulnerability assessment framework together with practitioners in crisis management and assessed the suitability of its components in three past crises and their scenario-based derivations: a large-scale power outage, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a cyber-attack. Rather than deterministically concluding about vulnerability based on prefixed factors, the framework guides relevant stakeholders to systematically think through categories of vulnerability pertinent to a scenario. We used a table-top exercise, interviews, and focus groups to demonstrate how the framework broadens the crisis managers' understanding of the scope of factors that may cause vulnerability, the related sources of information and enables to identify individuals burdened by certain vulnerability mixes. The new framework could be applied to different types of crises to enhance preparedness, demand-driven relief and rescue during critical events.