Such assessments may be conducted on behalf of a range of different organizations, from small businesses up to large regional infrastructures.
Vulnerability from the perspective of disaster management means assessing the threats from potential hazards to the population and to infrastructure.
(Lövkvist-Andersen, et al., 2004)[1] In general, a vulnerability analysis serves to "categorize key assets and drive the risk management process."
The framework makes use of nested flowcharts to show how social and environmental forces interact to create situations vulnerable to sudden changes.
This should be followed by a second stage that estimates directional changes in those current risk factors and characterizes the community's future adaptive capacity.