The session on "Natural Hazards' Impact on Urban Areas and Infrastructure" started in 1999 and was continued till 2007 with one year break.
Up to now the part on earthquake hazard was most successful. So in 2006 a special issue was published in the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering gathering selected papers from the sessions at the 1st and respectivelly 2nd European Geosciences Union General Assemblies (2004 Nice and 2005 Vienna).
However, also other hazards played an important place and through co-operation with fellow scientists we are going to soon publish another special issue covering climate change, floods, mountain hazards like avalanches and volcanoes and earthquakes.
Although we tried to extend the scope of the session to be more interdisciplinary by including communication of risk and thus social sciences, we wish to extend this more in the direction of urban planning as the name sais.
We could involve also cultural heritage aspects as since the 1970s, when participation introduced sociology in planning also integrated conservation is proclaimed (Declaration and Charter of Amsterdam, 1975) involving both architecture and urban planning in preservation actions.
We would like to know how to protect cultural heritage from natural hazards.

So in this meeting we would like to do:
- Presentation of special issues so far,
- presentation of special issues in planning,
- book publication,
- overview of previous sessions,
- future trends: how shall we organise the session in the next years, which could be the focus.