The application of frameworks for measuring social vulnerability and resilience to geophysical hazards within developing countries: A systematic review and narrative synthesis

[Display omitted] •We conducted a systematic review of measuring social vulnerability in LMICs.•Few papers measured changes in vulnerability or resilience over time.•There was a lack of systematic efforts at validation.•Many applications rely on existing frameworks with little adaptation to contexts.•More hypothesis-driven studies are required. Quantifying and mapping resilience and social vulnerability is a widely used technique to support risk management, with recent years seeing a proliferation of applications across the Global South. To synthesise this emerging literature, we conducted a systematic review of applications of social vulnerability and resilience frameworks in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) using the PRISMA methodology. 2152 papers were extracted from 15 databases and then screened according to our pre-defined criteria, leaving 68 studies for full text analysis. Our analysis revealed that: (1) Most studies consider vulnerability or resilience to be generic properties of social systems; (2) Few papers measured vulnerability or resilience in a way that tests whether they are relatively stable or dynamic features of social systems; (3) Many applications rely on stock applications of existing frameworks, with little adaptation to specific cultural, societal or economic contexts; (4) There is a lack of systematic validation; (5) More hypothesis-driven studies (as opposed to descriptive mapping exercises) are required in order to develop a better understanding of the mechanisms through which vulnerability and resilience shape the capacity to prepare for, respond and recover from disasters.