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Introduction
Disasters are extreme events that exceed a community’s ability to cope with them. Hazards (whether originating from technological or natural environments) have significant negative impacts on the community.
It is therefore important to identify, assess, and understand these social vulnerabilities. Social vulnerability perspective emphasizes on the people’s capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impacts of these natural hazards.
It is concerned with the people’s behavioral changes and susceptibility to these changes. Social vulnerability is random and varies across various sections of the community.
It is therefore important to understand these demographics. This paper will address the variability and demographics of these social vulnerabilities.
Demographics of Social Vulnerability
Overview
The social impacts of disasters range from economic, psychosocial, political, and demographic impacts.
Understanding these social impacts provides a basis for pre-impact predictions as well as the development of contingency plans that helps in the prevention of occurrence of adverse consequences in the long term.
Vulnerabilities
Psychosocial Vulnerabilities
According to Perry, Prater & Lindell (2006), these are the impacts of disasters on an individual’s social development. This is evident among victims of disasters in relation to their social environment.
The disaster’s impacts disrupt their social functionalities. Psychosocial impacts include behavioral changes, emotional changes, and changes in appetite and concentration.
Many disaster victims benefit more from their usual social support network made up of family, friends and workmates.
However, the minorities within the community including the elderly, children, ethnic or racial minorities, emergency workers and the most affected families require extra social attention in order to cope with these impacts (Perry et al., 2006).
Economic Impacts
Disasters damage assets thus creating huge economic losses. The direct and indirect costs of repair and replacement are high for households, businesses, and government.
These are assets such as roads, buildings, farms and such others. Destruction of these assets causes a decrease in the quality of life and the society’s productivity (Perry et al., 2006).
Political Impacts
Political disruption and social activism arises due to government’s criticism and political intervention in disaster response and management. Patterns of civil governance may be disrupted by these disasters thus a disruption of political dispensation.
Communities’ and government’s grievances arise from ineffective resource allocation and management policies and their impacts on affected communities (Perry et al., 2006).
Demographic Impacts
Such impacts include the temporary displacement of a segment of the population. Other likely demographic impacts include changes in number of births as well as the number of deaths.
Changes in the population will be present due to the economical, social, and environmental changes arising from the disaster (Perry et al., 2006).
Fundamentals of Demographics of Social Vulnerability
One of the main elements of social vulnerability includes assisting the affected community to cope with and recover from disasters. Communities and policy makers both at the local and national levels should put in place recovery mechanisms and strategies.
Pre-impact interventions such as emergency preparedness practices, hazard mitigation measures and recovery preparedness practices collectively reduce the impacts of the disaster (Perry et al., 2006).
Communities must have acquired response resources such as the necessary facilities, personnel, and equipment. They must constantly update their resources through maintenance of the equipments, training of personnel as well as continued planning and exercises.
The local and national governments in hazard prone communities should also be prepared to take appropriate actions in the event of such disasters (Perry et al., 2006).
Conclusion
Through hazard mitigation, emergency and recovery preparedness practices, communities are able to deal with the impacts of hazards and effectively recover from them.
Social vulnerability perspective therefore seeks to identify these effective means of hazard preparedness and enhance full community recovery after the disaster has taken place.
Reference
Perry, R. W., Prater, C. S., & Lindell, M. K. (2006). Fundamentals of emergency management. Web.
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