Building comparable global change vulnerability assessments: The vulnerability scoping diagram

Advancing vulnerability science depends in part on identifying common themes from multiple, independent vulnerability assessments. Such insights are difficult to produce when the assessments use dissimilar, often qualitative, measures. The Vulnerability Scoping Diagram is presented to facilitate the comparison of assessments with dissimilar measures. The diagram is illustrated with recent research on drought vulnerabilities, showing that common insights into vulnerability may emerge if independent research teams use a common structure for organizing information about exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity—even if the underlying measures differ between assessments. Broadly adopting this technique, which is grounded in the “Eight Steps” methodological protocol [Schröter, D., Polsky, C., Patt, A., 2005. Assessing vulnerabilities to the effects of global change: an eight step approach. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10(4), 573–595], will enable a vulnerability meta-analysis, the lessons from which may permit places to identify helpful adaptation or mitigation options without first having to conduct their own vulnerability assessments.