EGU 2014: Multi-type hazard and risk assessment: Concepts and methodologies

Details of the 2014 EGU multi-type hazard and risk session for you all. Really disappointed I won't be able to attend this year. Once again, Kevin Fleming from the MATRIX project convening the session. Really nice to see this topic being pushed forward. Hope there are some good and relevant presentations for 2014!







NH9.9 Multi-type hazard and risk assessment: Concepts and methodologies

Convener: Kevin Fleming
Co-Conveners: Alexander Garcia-Aristizabal , Nadejda Komendantova

Losses arising from natural hazards are increasing worldwide, and are expected
to continue to do so, often as a result of the increased  exposure and vulnerability
of human society.  Scientists, engineers,  regional and local planners, civil
protection authorities and disaster  managers usually treat natural and
anthropogenic hazards and risks  individually; however, such a framework leads
to the neglect of the  frequent spatial and temporal relationships that exist between
hazards  and their associated risks.  This potentially leads to the situation where
simply summing the individual risks may result in an  underestimation of their true
impact, while identifying the different  types of risk, i.e., direct versus indirect, and
tangible versus  intangible, remains a challenge.  There is therefore an
increasing  realisation that a multi-hazard and risk framework is necessary if 
one is to effectively assess the consequences of natural and  anthropogenic
disasters, and to optimise the available resources for  mitigating against such
events.  Such a framework would need to consider  the various interactions
between different hazard types, and hazards  and risks, while also considering
the different loss types in order to  gain a complete view of how disasters impact
upon the broader society.

This session aims at presenting the latest developments in the area of  multi-type
hazard and risk assessment. The issues of particular concern  are cascade effects,
including the interactions between natural and  NaTech events, uncertainty
propagation and temporal dependency, which  requires examining short-term
sequences where hazards occur almost  simultaneously or are triggered by one
another, to longer-term scenarios  that may cover several months or years.  Case
studies where a  multi-type framework has been applied (for better or for worse) or
could  have been beneficially applied are also of interest.