Bridging Equity and Governance: A Conceptual Framework for Diagnosing Vulnerability Redistribution in Flood Adaptation

Climate change intensifies flood risk, yet adaptation interventions can unintentionally redistribute vulnerability across social groups, spaces, and jurisdictions. This study introduces the vulnerability transfer matrix (VTM) as a conceptual diagnostic framework for interpreting how vulnerability redistribution emerges through flood adaptation governance. Rather than offering a new metric, model, or decision tool, the VTM contributes an ex‐post diagnostic discipline that requires hazards, interventions, redistribution mechanisms, and equity implications to be interpreted together before vulnerability redistribution is attributed in a case. Using Dubai and Metro Manila as contrasting illustrative cases, the paper shows how this diagnostic logic helps distinguish among three analytically different mechanisms of redistribution: exposure redistribution, adaptive‐capacity fragmentation, and sensitivity amplification through procedural or epistemic exclusion. In Dubai, centralised infrastructure planning highlights adaptive‐capacity fragmentation, while in Metro Manila composite vulnerability assessment practices reveal sensitivity amplification through procedural or epistemic exclusion and broader systemic protection gaps. Treated as contrasting illustrations rather than controlled comparisons, the cases demonstrate how governance arrangements condition vulnerability outcomes beyond hazard exposure alone. The VTM provides a coherent ex‐post diagnostic lens for comparative interpretation of equity‐relevant blind spots in flood adaptation governance.