General Applications
Oxfam America, Exposed: Social Vulnerability and Climate Change in the US Southeast, Oxfam America
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, The Public Health Vulnerability Mapping System, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
NOAA, NOAA Digital Coast
US Army Corps of Engineers, Social Vulnerability Index-Explorer
HVRI for the Florida Department of Health, Climate-Sensitive Hazards in Florida
University of Central Florida, Vulnerability Mapping Analysis Platform
FEMA, National Risk Index for Natural Hazards (NRI)
Applications to Disaster Recovery
Puerto Rico: Hurricane’s Irma and Maria CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan [pdf]
Florida: Hurricane’s Hermine and Matthew CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan [pdf]
Hurricane Irma CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan [pdf]
South Carolina: 2015 Severe Storms and Flooding CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan
Hurricane Matthew CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan
South Carolina CDBG-MIT Action Plan
Richland County, SC Community Development Block Grant Mitigation (CDBG-MIT) Action Plan
South Carolina Hurricane Florence Action Plan
Texas: Hurricane Harvey Equitable Recovery (Oxfam)
West Virginia: Severe Storms and Flooding CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan
Louisiana: Severe Storms and Flooding CDBG-DR Impact Assessment and Recovery Action Plan
International Applications of SoVI
SoVI Norway: Holand, I. , P. Lujala, and J. K. Rød, 2010. "Social vulnerability assessment of Norway: A quantitative approach," Norwegian Journal of Geography 65 (1):1-17.
SoVI China: Chen, W., S. L. Cutter, C. T. Emrich, and P. Shi, 2013. "Measuring social vulnerability to natural hazards in the Yangtze River Delta region, China," International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 4 (4):169-181.
SoVI Portugal: Guillard-Goncalves, C., S. L. Cutter, C. T. Emrich, and J. L. Zezere, 2014. "Application of Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) and delineation of natural risk zones in Greater Lisbon, Portugal," Journal of Risk Research 18 (5):651-674.
SoVI Brazil: Hummell, B. M., S. L. Cutter, and C. T. Emrich, 2016. "Social vulnerability to natural hazards in Brazil," International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 7 (2):111-122.
SoVI Colombia: Roncancio, D. J., S.L. Cutter, and A.C. Nardocci, 2020. Social vulnerability in Colombia, Intl. J. Disaster Risk Reduction 50:101872.
State Hazard Mitigation Plans
State of Arkansas All-Hazards Mitigation Plan, 2013
State of Colorado Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, 2018
Enhanced State Hazard Mitigation Plan: State of Florida, 2018
State of Georgia Hazard Mitigation Strategy, 2014
Illinois Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
Kansas Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
State of Mississippi Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
Missouri State Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
New Mexico State Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2013
New York State Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2019
State of North Carolina Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
State of North Dakota Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2013
Oregon Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, 2015
South Carolina Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2018
State of South Dakota Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2014
State of Tennessee Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2013
West Virginia Disaster Recovery Action Plan, 2017
County Hazard Mitigation Plans
Arapahoe County, CO; Beaufort County, SC; Boone County, MO; Calaveras County, CA; Clinton County, IA; Dallas County, IA; Davidson County, SD; Dent County, MO; Dillon County, SC; Edwards County, IL; Howard County, MO; Jackson County, IL; Knox County, TN; La Plata County, CO; Larimer County, CO; Madison County, MO; Moniteau County, MO; Pitkin County, CO; Reynolds County, MO; Richmond County, GA; Warren County, MO; Worth County, MO
Regional Mitigation Plans
Central Kansas, KS; Central Midlands Council of Governments, SC; Johnson, Leavenworth, Wyandotte Ctys, KS; Lowcountry Council of Governments, SC; Northeast Kansas, KS; Northeastern Virginia, VA; South Kansas, KS; Southeast Kansas, KS; Thornton, Federal Heights, and Northglenn, CO
City Mitigation Plans
City of Ann Arbor, MI; City of Colorado Springs, CO; City of Galveston, TX
Town of Milford, MA
In the News
NBC News, October 23, 2017. Receding Waters in Houston Reveal Families' Divergent Paths to Recovery
Selected Publications Referencing Cutter et al. (2003)
Adger, W. N., 2006. “Vulnerability,” Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions 16(3): 268-281.
Adger, W. N., H. Eakin, and A. Winkels, 2008. “Nested and teleconnected vulnerabilities to environmental change,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7:150-157.
Apotsos, A., 2019. "Mapping relative social vulnerability in six mostly urban municipalities in South Africa," Applied Geography 105:86-101.
Ashley, W. S., 2007. "Spatial and temporal analysis of tornado fatalities in the United States: 1880-2005," Weather And Forecasting 22 (6):1214-1228.
Bakker, K., 2005. "Katrina: The public transcript of 'disaster'," (guest editorial) Environment And Planning D 23 (6):795-802.
Belliveau, S., B. Smit, and B. Bradshaw, 2006. "Multiple exposures and dynamic vulnerability: Evidence from the grape industry in the Okanagan Valley, Canada," Global Environmental Change 16 (4):364-378.
Birkmann, J. (ed), 2006. Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.
Bryant, D. L., and M. D. Abkowitz, 2007. "Development of a terrestrial chemical spill management system," Journal Of Hazardous Materials 147 (1-2):78-90.
Burningham, K., J. Fielding, and D. Thrush, 2008. "'It'll never happen to me': understanding public awareness of local flood risk," Disasters 32 (2):216-238.
Cigler, B. A., 2007. "The "Big Questions" of Katrina and the 2005 great flood of New Orleans," Public Administration Review 67:64-76.
Costanza, R., W. J. Mitsch, and J. W. Day, 2006. "Creating a sustainable and desirable New Orleans," Ecological Engineering 26 (4):317-320.
Costanza, R., W. J. Mitsch, and J. W. Day, 2006. "A new vision for New Orleans and the Mississippi delta: applying ecological economics and ecological engineering," Frontiers In Ecology And The Environment 4 (9):465-472.
Crozier, M., J. McClure, J. Vercoe, and M. Wilson, 2006. "The effects of hazard zone information on judgments about earthquake damage," Area 38 (2):143-152.
Curtis, A., J. W. Mills, and M. Leitner, 2007. "Katrina and vulnerability: The geography of stress," Journal Of Health Care For The Poor And Underserved 18 (2):315-330.
Cutter, S. L., L. Barnes, M. Berry, C. Burton, E. Evans, E. Tate, and J. Webb, 2008. “A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters,” Global Environmental Change 18(4):598-606.
Cutter, S. L., C. G. Burton, and C. T. Emrich, 2010. "Disaster resilience indicators for benchmarking baseline conditions," Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 7(1), Article 51.
Davlasheridze, M., K. Fisher-Vanden, and H. A. Klaiber, 2017. "The effects of adaptation measures on hurricane induced property losses: Which FEMA investments have the highest returns?", Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 81:93-114.
De Andrade, M., C. F. Szlafsztein, P. Souza, A. Araujo, and M. Gomes, 2010. “A socioeconomic and natural vulnerability index for oil spills in an Amazonian harbor: A case study using GIS and remote sensing,” Journal of Environmental Management 91(10):1972-1980.
Denberg, T. D., F. J. Kim, R. C. Flanigan, D. Fairclough, B. L. Beaty, J. F. Steiner, and R. M. Hoffman, 2006. "The influence of patient race and social vulnerability on urologist treatment recommendations in localized prostate carcinoma," Medical Care 44 (12):1137-1141.
Denberg, T. D., and J. F. Steiner, 2007. "Vulnerability - More than a construct, a clinical reality: Response to Denberg et al, December 2006 Medical Care - Response to letter from Dr. Gregory D. Stevens," Medical Care 45 (3):275-276.
Deressa, T., R. M. Hassan, and C. Ringler, 2008. “Measuring Ethiopian farmers’ vulnerability to climate change across regional states,” International Food Policy Research Institute Discussion Paper 00806 pp 1-19, Washington DC: IFPRI.
Ebert, A., Kerle, N., and A. Stein, 2009. “Urban social vulnerability assessment with physical proxies and spatial metrics derived from air- and spaceborne imagery and GIS data,” Natural Hazards 48(2):275-294.
Eakin, H., and L. A. Bojorquez-Tapia, 2008. "Insights into the composition of household vulnerability from multicriteria decision analysis," Global Environmental Change 18 (1):112-127.
Eakin, H., and A. L. Luers, 2006. "Assessing the vulnerability of social-environmental systems," Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31:365-394.
Eriksen, S. H. and P. M. Kelly, 2007. “Developing credible vulnerability indicators for climate adaptation policy assessment,” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 12(4):495-524.
Farber, D. A. and J. Chen (eds), 2006. Disasters and the Law. New York, NY: Aspen Publishers.
Fekete, A., 2009. “Validation of a social vulnerability index in context to river-floods in Germany,” Natural Hazards Earth Systems Science 9:393-403.
Fielding, J. and K. Buckingham, 2005. “Environmental inequality and flood hazard,” Local Environment 10(4):379-395.
Fielding, J., 2007. "Environmental injustice or just the lie of the land: an investigation of the socio-economic class of those at risk from flooding in England and Wales," Sociological Research Online 12 (4).
Finch, C., C. T. Emrich, and S. L. Cutter, 2010. “Disaster disparities and differential recovery in New Orleans,” Population and Environment 31(4):179-202.
Flint, C. G., and A. E. Luloff, 2005. "Natural resource-based communities, risk, and disaster: An intersection of theories," Society & Natural Resources 18 (5):399-412.
Fothergill, A. and L. Peek, 2006. “Surviving catastrophe: A study of children in Hurricane Katrina,” pp 97-129 in Learning from Catastrophe: Quick Response Research in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina. Boulder, CO: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado.
Gardoni, P. and C. Murphy, 2010. “Gauging the societal impacts of natural disasters using a capability approach,” Disasters 34(3):619-636.
Gbetibouo, G. A., C. Ringler, and R. Hassan, 2010. “Vulnerability of the South African farming sector to climate change and variability: An indicator approach,” Natural Resources Forum 34(3):175-187.
Greiving, S., M. Fleischauer, and J. Luckenkotter, 2006. “A Methodology for an integrated risk assessment of spatially relevant hazards,” Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 49(1):1-19.
Harlan, S. L., A. J. Brazel, L. Prashad, W. L. Stefanov, and L. Larsen, 2006. "Neighborhood microclimates and vulnerability to heat stress," Social Science & Medicine 63 (11):2847-2863.
Hinkel, J., 2011. "'Indicators of vulnerability and adaptive capacity': Towards a clarification of the science-policy interface," Global Environmental Change 21 (1):198-208.
Hufschmidt, G., M. Crozier, and T. Glade, 2005. "Evolution of natural risk: research framework and perspectives," Natural Hazards And Earth System Sciences 5 (3):375-387.
Hufschmidt, G., and M. J. Crozier, 2008. "Evolution of natural risk: analyzing changing landslide hazard in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand," Natural Hazards 45 (2):255-276.
Kumpulainen, S., 2006, “Vulnerability concepts in hazard and risk assessment,” Geological Survey of Finland Special Paper 42: 65-74.
Lahiri-Dutt, K., 2007. "Like the drifting grains of Sand: Vulnerability, security and adjustment by communities in the charlands of the Damodar river, India," South Asia-Journal Of South Asian Studies 30 (2):327-349.
Leichenko, R. M. and K. L. O’Brien, 2008. Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Levine, J. N., A. M. Esnard, and A. Sapat, 2007. "Population displacement and housing dilemmas due to catastrophic disasters," Journal Of Planning Literature 22 (1):3-15.
Li, F. Y., J. Bi, J. Huang, C. S. Qu, J. Yang, Q. M. Bu, 2010. “Mapping human vulnerability to chemical accidents in the vicinity of chemical industry parks,” Journal of Hazardous Materials 179(1):500-506.
Lin, S. Y., D. G. Shaw, and M. C. Ho, 2008. "Why are flood and landslide victims less willing to take mitigation measures than the public?" Natural Hazards 44 (2):305-314.
Manyena, S. B., 2006. “The concept of resilience revisited,” Disasters 30(4):434-450.
Masuda, J. R., and T. Garvin, 2006. "Place, culture, and the social amplification of risk," Risk Analysis 26 (2):437-454.
McDaniel, J. T., A. J. Diehr, C. Davis, N. Kil, and K. H. Thomas, 2018. "Breast cancer screening and outcomes: an ecological study of county-level female Veteran population density and social vulnerability," Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health 4 (1): 51-59.
Negri, A. J., N. Burkardt, J. H. Golden, J. B. Halverson, G. J. Huffman, M. C. Larsen, J. A. McGinley, R. G. Updike, J. P. Verdin, and G. F. Wieczorek, 2005. "The hurricane-flood-landslide continuum," Bulletin Of The American Meteorological Society 86 (9):1241-1247.
Norris, F. H., S. P. Stevens, B. Pfefferbaum, K. F. Wyche, and R. L. Pfefferbaum, 2008. "Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness," American Journal Of Community Psychology 41 (1-2):127-150.
Peek, L. and L. Strough, 2010. “Children with disabilities in the context of disaster: A social vulnerability perspective,” Child Development 81(4):1260-1270.
Peguero, A. A., 2006. "Latino disaster vulnerability - The dissemination of hurricane mitigation information among Florida's homeowners," Hispanic Journal Of Behavioral Sciences 28 (1):5-22.
Picou, J. S., and K. Hudson, 2010. “Hurricane Katrina and mental health: A research note on Mississippi Gulf Coast residents,” Sociological Inquiry 80(3):513-524.
Roberts, P., 2007. "Toward a national hazards risk assessment," Journal Of Homeland Security And Emergency Management 4 (3).
Romieu, E., T. Welle, S. shneiderbauer, M. Pelling, and C. Vinchon, 2010. “Vulnerability assessment within climate change and natural hazard contexts: revealing gaps and synergies through coastal applications,” Sustainability Science 5(2):159-170.
Solberg, C., T. Rossetto, H. Joffe, 2010. “The social psychology of seismic hazard adjustment: re-evaluating the international literature,” Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 10(8): 1663-1677.
Török, I., 2018. "Qualitative assessment of social vulnerability to flood hazards in Romania," Sustainability 10(10).
Webler, T., and F. Lord, 2010. “Planning for the human dimensions of oil spills and spill response,” Environmental Management 45(4):723-738.