Towards a Formal Framework of Vulnerability to Climate Change

There is confusion regarding the notion of “vulnerability” in the climate change scientific community. Recent research has identified a need for formalisation, which would support accurate communication and the elimination of misunderstandings that result from ambiguous interpretations. Moreover, a formal framework of vulnerability is a prerequisite for computational approaches to its assessment. This paper presents an attempt at developing such a formal framework. We see vulnerability as a relative concept, in the sense that accurate statements about vulnerability are possible only if one clearly specifies (i) the entity that is vulnerable, (ii) the stimulus to which it is vulnerable and (iii) the preference criteria to evaluate the outcome of the interaction between the entity and the stimulus. We relate the resulting framework to the IPCC conceptualisation of vulnerability and two recent vulnerability studies.