VULNERABILITY AND FLOOD RISK IN URBAN AREAS Autor/a

Flood risk management has been increasingly noticed over the years at the same time that population has settled in highly concentrated urban areas. Such areas, whenever they are in danger of suffering the effects of damaging natural phenomena (in particular, flooding), are likely to experience numerous losses. In this context, flood risk management (FRM) aims to carry out analyses that take into account all influencing aspects to determine the probable negative effects and, with this information, to take the appropriate measures to reduce risk up to a “tolerable ” level of risk. This paper focuses firstly on the explanation of the three main concepts intimately related with risk, which are flood hazard, flood risk and vulnerability. Although they seem clear concepts, it actually happens that depending on which source or science they are consulted different meanings can be attributed. Therefore a clear definition for each concept is presented with the purpose of leaving no space for misinterpretation. Moreover, a literature review is done to collect different available methodologies that express either of the these concepts so that similarities and differences can be noticed and compared