"Their general concern was about whether the information on vulnerabilities could be exploited by terrorists," explains William Colglazier, the academy's executive officer.
A thorough study of HFA's text indicates that community empowerment is perceived as the result of providing communities with (external, expert) information on vulnerabilities, hazards, and DRR that they can understand, rather than through valuing what people already know about their own vulnerabilities and their personal, often long-term, experience in managing risks.
Besides the increasing amount of studies on flash floods available, in-depth information on vulnerability in Mediterranean countries was missing so far.
This has resulted in incompatibilities and inconsistencies among vulnerability studies and has made it difficult to discover, access, and use data and information on vulnerability (NRC 2006; Giuliani et al. 2011).
The ontology outlined in the previous section allows for the structuring of information on vulnerability assessments in a way that these concepts can be queried or assessed via a structured and rational manner.
Integrating adaptation and mitigation response actions to climate change in urban-level policies requires comprehensive information on vulnerability patterns, yet a majority of local governments and decision makers in various cities in developing nations lack spatially explicit information on climate change vulnerability and its key drivers.
With easy accessibility to structured knowledge and the chances associated with being a semantic and collaborative wiki platform, VuWiki can contribute to the dissemination and use of existing knowledge as well as to the promotion of data identification, access, interoperability, and the sharing of key sources of information on vulnerability assessment methods throughout the world.
For example, information on vulnerability to climate impacts will be needed at a community or even individual level for implementing effective heat emergency plans.
The Republican draft included several administration proposals bitterly opposed by many Democrats, including one that would limit public availability of information on national vulnerabilities submitted by private companies.
"They are collecting information on consumer vulnerabilities, tracking them site to site, changing the ad message on the fly to be more appealing.
According to the Hyogo Framework, "Disasters can be substantially reduced if people are well informed and motivated towards a culture of disaster prevention and resilience, which in turn requires the collection, compilation and dissemination of relevant knowledge and information on hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities" (UNISDR 2005, p. 9).
