The economic and social costs of disasters resulting from earthquakes, and associated hazards (e.g. landslides and mudflows) are immense, through damage to local or regional economies, impacts on long-term health, well-being, business, housing and education. Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards in China (IRNHiC) is a strategic research programme jointly supported by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). This is a collaborative research programme between UK and Chinese scientists.
Within IRNHiC programme six interdisciplinary projects were funded. Those projects are interlinked together aiming to combine and build on the strengths of natural and social sciences and reduce losses over time, help preparation and post-event management, and minimise vulnerability and long-term damage. Ultimately, the high level goals of IRNHiC are to promote economic development and welfare in China by increasing social and economic resilience through reducing risks from multiple natural hazards; integrate natural and social science approaches across the programme to enhance the potential for impact on the welfare of those at risk; build on existing strengths in the UK and China, fostering stronger China-UK collaboration involving transferable research, protocols and approaches that can apply to both countries.
This session is an important annual gathering of the six projects as well as researchers from outside of the projects, to present and discuss their research outcomes, fill in current knowledge gaps, and exchange information to maximize the information benefits. We welcome everybody who is interested in the IRNHiC program to join our discussion.
We expect at least three abstracts will be submitted from each project, so there will be about 18 presentations to cover a diverse range of natural hazards in China.