Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation

The paper introduces a formal framework to clarify the concept of vulnerability to climate change, using formalisation to make structures explicit. It identifies three types of operational definitions for assessing vulnerability: evaluating harm for projected future evolutions, evaluating current capacity to reduce harm, or combining both. The author concludes that there is a lack of systematic relationship between theoretical and operational definitions, a mismatch that was not made explicit in previous conceptual literature.

• Operational definitions for assessing vulnerability are categorized into three distinct types: those that evaluate harm for projected future evolutions, those that evaluate the current capacity to reduce harm, or those that combine these two approaches.
• The formal framework reveals that there is no systematic relationship between theoretical definitions of vulnerability and the operational methodologies used to assess it, a gap not previously made explicit in conceptual literature.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2013). Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation. https://www.sei.org/publications/clarifying-vulnerability-definitions-and-assessments-using-formalisation/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation. 2013. https://www.sei.org/publications/clarifying-vulnerability-definitions-and-assessments-using-formalisation/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation |date=31 January 2013 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/clarifying-vulnerability-definitions-and-assessments-using-formalisation/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2013clarifying, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2013}, month = jan, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/clarifying-vulnerability-definitions-and-assessments-using-formalisation/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }