Understanding the 2007 floods in South Asia
This special issue of southasiadisasters.net is the first of a series of three on flooding in South Asia. The main argument of this series is to provide - in addition to a social and economic approach - a technical perspective to help understand this recurring problem. In literature on natural disasters and vulnerability, there is a tendency to see and analyse vulnerability mainly as a social problem. Though the concept of vulnerability is often split into social, economical, physical and environmental aspects, most authors do not go into the technical details or causes of vulnerability. The technical or environmental aspects are only touched on briefly. Of course, the social aspects - whether one calls them political, cultural. organisational and more - are very important. Let us not forget the possibly even more important technical and physical details and describe them. These details will add to our understanding and will allow us to deal with flooding in a better way.