This study quantified the relative vulnerability of 3,141 counties in the United States. We built a comprehensive community vulnerability index (CCVI) that considers household, business, and public levels. Eighteen variables related to household socioeconomic characteristics, business size and diversity, local government economic size, social capital, and net immigration were used. In the existing vulnerability indices (CRE, SVI, and SoVI), the indices were constructed by using socioeconomic characteristics of the household. In addition to socioeconomic variables, this study sought to expand the concept of “place-based” by considering the business structure within the community and the potential ability to maintain the existing order of the community to construct a comprehensive index. Additionally, by providing the relative vulnerability of the community at each level (private, business, public), each dimension can provide evidence on which areas are more vulnerable and need remediation than others. We expect that the CCVI can be broadly extended to be used in various forms. In this study, we extend the vulnerability index by including exogenous variables such as climate change. In particular, the extended climate-enhanced CCVI in this study shows that the existing vulnerability index can be strengthened by incorporating extreme climate events.

After the 3.11 triple disaster, massive information flooded the media. However, a comprehensive picture of the information ecosystem regarding 3.11 is yet to emerge. This article presents a quantitative analysis of a large amount of information and discourses concerning 3.11. In addition to gaps in information about damage and danger, we found that the areas most affected by the triple disaster had a greater number of people lacking access to vital information. These people were not only left behind during the first weeks of the catastrophe, but also thereafter, in the agenda for reconstruction.

This essay explores two different approaches to disaster found in fiction following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923: trauma and differential vulnerability.

This article stresses the need for climate adaptation to better grasp the social dynamics of vulnerability to climate change. It argues that prevailing approaches in the UK have been inattentive to the social determinants of vulnerability for ethnic and racial minorities. The article begins by setting out the ways in which adaptation is understood and interpolated across multiple levels in the policy process, before discussing why prevailing approaches struggle to recognise that certain social dynamics render some populations more vulnerable to the ongoing effects of climate change. Following this, it will focus on domains of housing and health to reinscribe vulnerability in adaptation as a multidimensional concept, something that registers differentiated levels of structured adaptive capacity by focusing on racialised communities. It concludes by elaborating ways forward in climate adaptation planning and action.

This is the full and official text of the Presidential address delivered at the Opening ceremony of the 25th World Congress of Philosophy in Rome, Italy, on August 1st 2025.

Classic serotonergic psychedelics are experiencing a clinical revival, which has also revived ethical debates about psychedelic-assisted therapy. A particular issue here is how to prepare and protect patients from the vulnerability that the psychedelic state creates. This article first examines how this vulnerability manifests itself, revealing that it results from an impairment of autonomy: psychedelics diminish decision-making capacity, reduce controllability, and limit resistance to external influences. It then analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five safety measures proposed in the literature, what aspect of the patient’s vulnerability they seek to reduce, and how they can be optimized. The analysis shows that while preparatory sessions, advance directives, and specific training and oversight are useful, starting with a lower dosage and no therapy is less so. Finally, the article presents a safety measure that has been overlooked in the literature but could be highly effective and feasible: bringing a close person to the psychedelic session.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has moved attention within International Security back to Great Power Politics and interstate war, and away from phenomena like ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ and lone actor terrorism. Is the War on Terror paradigm receding? This paper argues that counter-radicalisation imaginaries and counter-extremism programming will all remain stubbornly present despite the shift back to interstate war. The resilience of domestic War on Terror policies will stem from their integration within local municipality activity and social policy during the second decade of the 21st century. These policy areas and levels are detached from the international security community, meaning that shifts in attention at the global level will have little effect upon localised national security practices. The paper then interrogates how counterterrorism agendas have so successfully entered the world of social policy and local public administration, using genealogical methods to trace how social security and crime prevention were historically prefaced upon defence. The paper traces the policy paradigm of ‘social defence’ which dominated mid-20th century international organisations, targeting non-criminal juveniles with pre-emptive interventions to prevent ‘dangerous persons’ imperilling society. Effectively, this untold history of crime prevention in Europe demonstrates the profound interlocking of national security, social policy and defence across the 20th century, with implications for the resilience of this triad.

The COVID-19 pandemic destabilised the political, social, and economic life of countries as it spread around the world. It posed multiple threats to individuals, societies, and across different domains of life, highlighting their intersectionality and uneven impacts. The paper focuses on the UK and South Korea, countries which took very different paths in framing and addressing the crisis. It draws on secondary data and an integrated critical human security and state capacity approach to compare how state responses, institutional capacity, and the mobilisation of policy instruments themselves construct constellations of insecurity which intersect with human security and vulnerability. It will demonstrate the structural constraints that have continued to shape vulnerability and the dynamics of human security and insecurity in turbulent times.

In 2020, the Israeli Supreme Court held section 4 of the Law on Prevention of Infiltration and Ensuring the Departure of Infiltrators from Israel, also known as the Deposit Law, to be unconstitutional. Among other provisions, that law required 36 per cent of the wages of foreign workers to be paid into a dedicated account and returned when the person left the country. For years the Deposit Law had a negative impact on the lives of asylum seekers because of its racialised, gendered, ethnonational and religious impact. Its intersectional impact illustrates cultural, structural and systematic violence, which has been particularly punitive for asylum-seeking women, who are more exposed to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

In this context, this interdisciplinary qualitative and empirical research article draws from empirical fieldwork conducted in Israel to understand the intersectional impact of the law. It therefore conducts a theoretical examination of the literature and connects that to the empirical study. Thus, the article empirically and theoretically investigates (i) the extent to which state-created categories foster unlawful multilayered and multilevel forms of vulnerability and discrimination; (ii) the intersectional impact of the Deposit Law and how it is related to SGBV; and (iii) how state-created intersecting vulnerabilities can be diagnosed. The overall goal of the article is to indicate the intertwined nature and interconnection between state-created categories and the inevitability of state-created vulnerabilities.

This state-of-the-art paper begins to unpack the concept of a housing crisis. Whilst it may be a useful starting point in recognising the presence of problems within UK housing provision and allocation, its generic and umbrella coverage papers over the diversity of experiences. Similarly, as a concept it neither suggests the causes of the crisis nor possible solutions. With this in mind, this paper explores commodification within housing and uses this to recognise that our relationship to housing and our relationship to the crisis, can be shaped by our relationship to capital. However, the paper takes this further by arguing that the presence of vulnerability should also be borne in mind when considering commodification, where vulnerability includes experiences of discrimination, mental health, and legal status.