With the trend of global change and globalization in these decades, natural disaster risk is getting much more serious. As the foundation of the disaster risk prevention, disaster assessment is composed of loss estimate and risk analysis. The vulnerability analysis is an important component in disaster assessment, connecting analysis of  hazard and risk. As the quantitative and accurate assessment means of vulnerability, the vulnerability curve has been widely used in disaster estimate, quantitative risk analysis and risk mapping. This paper briefly describes the research development of vulnerability curves of different hazards, emphasizing  the method of building vulnerability curves based on disaster data, existing curve, investigation and model. The research shows that the researches′ focuses switch from the single curve to multi-curve database, from single parameter to synthesized parameters, and from single method  to integrated method. Further development of vulnerability curve based on multi-discipline and multimethod will have the important impact on disaster estimate, risk analysis and disaster reduction.