Environmental Hazards

Rural communities' vulnerability to disasters is influenced not only by exposure and biophysical characteristics but also by demographic and social aspects. Communities can temper their vulnerability by building adaptive capacity, which is the ability of a social system to adjust to environmental changes through the mobilization of resources. An assessment of adaptive capacity should incorporate the collective expertise of local people to prepare actively, mitigate and recover from hazards by reducing their vulnerability. Our work seeks to understand which are the social characteristics and conditions of human communities that promote adaptive capacity for wildfires.