The geography of vulnerability: Who is at risk to multiple hazards in greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This thesis integrates multiple hazards with the concept of social disadvantage and the theory of marginalization to document, understand and assess social, and spatial inequalities regarding hazards in one of Canada's largest and most physically hazardous census metropolitan areas (CMA)---Greater Vancouver. The central objectives of the research are: (1) to document, understand and analyze the nature of social disadvantage; (2) to document and assess inequities in how the geography of social disadvantage relates to hazards; and, (3) to explore social processes that partially explain inequities in the spatial concentration of social disadvantage and human occupancy of hazardous areas. In this study, an assessment of social disadvantage at the neighbourhood level in Greater Vancouver is undertaken using various statistical techniques; the social data are integrated with hazard data in a geographic information system.; Social disadvantage is multi-faceted in this study, being defined by various aspects of age, gender, ethnicity and family. Each dimension appears to have distinct locational patterns in Greater Vancouver, which are somewhat dynamic temporally. Results also reveal inequities in relative levels of disadvantage across neighbourhoods. In regards to who is in harm's way, advantaged neighbourhoods tend to occupy hazardous areas more often than disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This finding challenges some accepted generalizations about social inequities and hazards in the literature. Neighbourhoods also differ with respect to the nature of hazards they are exposed to. Advantaged neighbourhoods tend to coincide with hazards associated with low frequency, high-magnitude events, while the opposite was found for populations in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.