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.
The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged the resilience of care organisations (and those dependent on them), especially when services are stopped or restricted. This study focuses on the experiences of care organisations that offer services to individuals in highly precarious situations in 10 European countries. It is based on 32 qualitative interviews and three workshops with managers and staff. The four key types of organisations reviewed largely had the same adaptation patterns in all countries. The most drastic changes were experienced by day centres, which had to suspend or digitise services, whereas night shelters and soup kitchens had to reorganise broadly their work; residential facilities were minimally affected. Given the drastic surge in demand for services, reliance on an overburdened (volunteer) workforce, and a lack of crisis plans, the care organisations with long-term trust networks with clients and intra-organisational cooperation adapted easier. The outcomes were worse for new clients, migrants, psychologically vulnerable people, and those with limited communicative abilities.
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