Trajectories of social vulnerability during the Soufrière Hills volcanic crisis

When some active volcanoes enter into an eruptive phase, they generate a succession of hazard events manifested over a multi-year period of time. Under such conditions of prolonged risk, understanding what makes a population vulnerable to volcanic threats is a complex and nuanced process, and must be analysed within the wider context of physical events, decisions, actions and inactions which may have accentuated the social differentiation of impacts. Further, we must acknowledge the temporal component of vulnerability, therefore our analyses must go beyond a transitory view to an understanding of the dynamics of vulnerability, particularly how inherent socio-economic conditions drive vulnerability today, and how patterns of vulnerability shift during the course of a long-lived crisis.