摘要：Society is vulnerable to natural disasters and impacts from climatechange. Vulnerability, as discussed here, is defined as the potentialfor loss [1-3], and is expressed as a function of exposure, sensitivity,and adaptive capacity [2-8]. Exposure is a function of an object’sproximity to a hazard, sensitivity as differential degrees of potentialloss of exposed objects, and adaptive capacity as the ability of an objector system to adjust to hazards and impacts [9]. For decades hazardsresearchers have conducted vulnerability assessments in efforts toidentify community vulnerability so that societal losses from naturalhazards may be reduced. These traditional vulnerability assessmentshowever, have paid less attention to the importance of multi-scalarspatial components when calculating a region or community’svulnerability. The literature concerning vulnerability assessmentsoften describes the scale at which the vulnerability assessment occurswithout much explanation as to how the scale of the assessment isdetermined [2,10-22]. One exception is the work of Luers et al. [23]and Luers [3], which uses a smaller geographic unit (the farm) torepresent the overall vulnerability of the Yaqui Valley (an agriculturalvalley in Mexico). Luers et al. [23] however, only attempt to modifythe scale of vulnerability assessments to quantify their study area, withtheir research not meant as a new method to alter the construction andimplementation of vulnerability frameworks. Most natural hazardsresearch to date as supported by the literature contains very little thatspeaks to the methods or rationale for selecting an appropriate scale forvulnerability and resilience assessments.
