Despite increasing losses and negative impacts caused by natural hazards worldwide, research and resources are targeted mainly at the study and management of the natural processes themselves, rather than on their interaction with the natural and built environment as well as the affected communities. The understanding of this interaction and its qualitative or quantitative assessment is the key to vulnerability reduction and increasing of resilience to natural hazards.
In this session, we welcome studies unveiling the dynamic root causes of vulnerability and aiming at the analysis and reduction of all its dimensions (physical, economic, social, environmental, cultural and institutional). Moreover, contributions focusing on the resilience of affected communities and the built environment to natural hazards in all phases of the disaster cycle and particularly the reconstruction phase (“build back better”) are of special interest. Additionally, we invite submissions concentrating on knowledge management, innovative data collection techniques, mobile applications and citizen science related to the vulnerability and resilience of the elements at risk.