Threat, risk and vulnerability to natural events. Socially constructed factors

Abstract

In attempting to explain the reasons why socio-natural disasters bring with them a chain of disastrous consequences, it is imperative to analyze the conception of risk and its associated elements: threat and vulnerability, given the discordances, confusions, gaps and inaccuracies about it. This requires a thorough analysis and the study of the multiplicity of factors capable of intervening in its compression, and that may somehow affect the lack of a Preventive Culture. From this emerges the present essay, whose purpose is to reflect on different conceptions of risk in different historical moments, impregnating of the type of society from which they originate, and in which theoretical models originate as abstractions of a reality constructed in the social imaginary, which attempts to explain and understand them. These are then schemes that merit a transformation through education, since this is the most appropriate tool, and at the same time able to influence and modify the way of perceiving, valuing and acting against adverse natural phenomena, and those factors that determine their conversion into calamitous events; All with the aim of being interpreted globally and systemically, redundating in affective and effective preparation, which will enable the understanding and correct action in a situation of risk or danger.

Keywords

• Riesgo, amenaza, vulnerabilidad, construcción social del riesgo, cultura preventiva.