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The capability concept – On how to define and describe capability in relation to risk, vulnerability and resilience

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

Capabilities-based planning and capability assessment are high on the agendas of several countries and organisations as part of their risk management and emergency preparedness. Despite this, few definitions of capability exist, and they are not easily related to concepts such as risk, vulnerability and resilience. The aim of the present study was thus to broaden the scientific basis of the risk field to also include the concept of capability. The proposed definition is based on a recently developed risk framework, and we define capability as the uncertainty about and the severity of the consequences of an activity given the occurrence of the initiating event and the performed task. We provide examples of how the response capability for a fictive scenario can be described using this definition, and illustrate how our definition can be used to analyse capability assessments prepared according to the Swedish crisis management system. We have analysed the content of 25 capability assessments produced in 2011 by stakeholders on local, regional and national level. It was concluded that none addressed uncertainty to any appreciable extent, and only a third described capability in terms of consequences and task, making it difficult to relate these capability assessments to risk assessments.

Department/s

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

45-54

Publication/Series

Reliability Engineering & System Safety

Volume

135

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • Capability assessment
  • Capacity assessment
  • Risk and vulnerability assessment
  • Resilience
  • Emergency management
  • Definition

Status

Published

Project

  • PRIVAD - Program for Risk and Vulnerability Analysis Development

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0951-8320