Global main approaches of risk and vulnerability assessment and implementation in scale transformation

In recent years,an increasing number of global and local initiatives have been launched to measure risk and vulnerability with a set of indicators and indices.From global scale perspective,the approaches of risk and vulnerability assessment include the UNDP's Disaster Risk Index(DRI),the Hotspots project by Columbia University, the Indicators for the Americas developed by the Institute of Environmental Studies,National University of Colombia -Manizales.From local scale perspective,Community-based Risk Index(CBRI) is an important representative approach in regional level.However,regardless of which measuring method of risk and vulnerability,one of the most important goals of developing tools for measuring vulnerability is to help bridge the gaps between the theoretical concepts of vulnerability and day-to - day decision making.This paper reviews the main international literatures in risk and vulnerability research field,and analyses the goal,framework,measuring indicators and fundamental requirement of these approaches of risk and vulnerability measuring.Main purposes of this paper lies in:(1) to grasp comprehensively domain tendency in the risk and the vulnerability assessment;(2) to understand the superiority and insufficiency of risk and the vulnerability assessment method;(3) to emphasize the contextualization of risk and the vulnerability assessment in the spatial scale transformation.The analysis of the Hotspots and DRI concept shows that these approaches cover only the first and second spheres(namely vulnerability as the likelihood to experience harm,vulnerability as an internal risk factor) of the concept of vulnerability.The Americas Project encompasses a more comprehensive indicator set,including the aspect of the lack of coping capacity and resilience, and also the Community Disaster-Risk Index,incorporates both capacity and measures as response categories.On the other hand,in order to enhance the scientific nature and the practicality of assessment method application besides the generation of new and better data for global and local vulnerability and risk assessment,it is also important to strengthen co-operation and exchange between global and local approaches.In implementation of scale transformation, the four approaches reviewed in this paper are an important basis for this further improvement of monitoring tools.But,we also need more research on how to measure vulnerability and risk as well as on how to improve and adjust existing indicator approaches for specific purposes and different scales under different region backgrounds.