Natural catastrophes not only have an immediate adverse, and often, disastrous effect on people and/or the environment but also have long term consequences for mitigation and recovery strategies. There is an ever increasing need for the reduction and sharing of risk at local, regional and global levels. This also increases the need for better integration of Public Private Academic (PPA) partnerships and tools to provide better estimates of humanitarian, infrastructural and financial loss as a basis to build up capicity for more resilient societies.

We continue to learn from catastrophic events such as the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand and floods in Pakistan which were unexpected in their severity and resulted in unprecedented damages. These events also have provided insights into the devastation, unforeseen consequences and complex ramifications on societal and infrastructural recovery and resilience.

The scientific community has a critical role to play in assessing the combined impacts of natural catastrophe risks, both in the public and private sectors. This session will highlight the role of science within public, private and academic partnerships to:
• Develop novel modelling techniques and applications
• Enhance the understanding of the complex mechanisms between hazard, vulnerability, economic and social impact
• Address problems in models and incomplete understanding identified from recent catastrophic events.
• Society capacity building

Bringing together academics, industry representatives and public policymakers, this session welcomes abstract submissions from either public, private or academic environments relating to natural hazard risk assessment. We encourage submissions from both the social and natural sciences, from all stakeholders presenting new research to stimulate debate and discussion, engaging multiple disciplines.