Session programme

The purpose of this session is to: (1) showcase the current state-of-the-art in global and continental scale natural hazard risk science, assessment, and application; (2) foster broader exchange of knowledge, datasets, methods, models, and good practice between scientists and practitioners working on different natural hazards and across disciplines globally; and (3) collaboratively identify future research avenues.
Reducing natural hazard risk is high on the global political agenda. For example, it is at the heart of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (and its predecessor the Hyogo Framework for Action) and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts. In response, the last 5 years has seen an explosion in the number of scientific datasets, methods, and models for assessing risk at the global and continental scale. More and more, these datasets, methods and models are being applied together with stakeholders in the decision decision-making process.
We invite contributions related to all aspects of natural hazard risk assessment at the continental to global scale, including contributions focusing on single hazards, multiple hazards, or a combination or cascade of hazards. We also encourage contributions examining the use of scientific methods in practice, and the appropriate use of continental to global risk assessment data in efforts to reduce risks. Furthermore, we encourage contributions focusing on globally applicable methods, such as novel methods for using globally available datasets and models to force more local models or inform more local risk assessment.

Climate change, globalization, urbanization, and increased interconnectedness between
physical, human, and technological systems pose major challenges to disaster risk reduction
(DRR). Subsequently, economic losses caused by natural hazards are increasing in many regions of the world, which call for novel scientific approaches and new types of data collection to integrate the study of the natural processes triggering hazards, with the study of socioeconomic, political and technical factors that shape exposure and vulnerability.

This session aims to gather contributions on research, empirical studies, and observations that are useful for understanding and unravel the nexus between physical, human, and technological systems in DRR. We have identified a few examples of empirical puzzles where knowledge that is more fundamental is needed, thus contributions on the following topics are particularly welcome (but not limited to):

- Failure is a potential source of lesson-drawing, but history also offers success stories where disasters were avoided that deserve more rigorous assessment – What can we learn from comparative studies?

- Why do some societies that experience frequent natural hazards increase their resilience, while others become more vulnerable?

- Why do lowering hazard levels sometimes paradoxically lead to increased risks in some places?

- Why – despite major progress in understanding drivers of risk and developing enhanced methodologies and tools for assessing it – do we still see an increase in impacts associated with natural hazards?

What is known as Silk Road, was a trade route active since the Han Dynasty (207 BC-220 BC) which played an essential role in connecting East and West in terms of exchanges of goods, technology and civilization. In recent years a new interest arose about it especially after the launch of the big project named "Belt and Road Initiative". Nowadays it covers more than 70 countries and 4.4 billion people (63% of the world). However, due to the active underlying geological structure, rapid tectonic uplift, and climate change, the frequency of natural hazards (e.g. Floods, landslides, debris flow) dramatically increased in this area. In addition to that, haphazard urbanization and human activities amplified the disaster risk and associated loss. As concern this aspects the Sendai Framework and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development proposed clear targets to reduce disaster loss and risk and make human settlements resilient and sustainable in local, national and regional levels.
To promote a safe, green, and resilient Silk Road, several main challenges need to be addressed:
1. Major gap in terms of common geological and meteorological background of natural hazards along the Belt and Road with few shared information and an unclear coordination mechanism.
2. Under climate change, natural hazards showed new characteristics in terms of formation, triggering criteria and mobility which is yet to be understood.
3. The demand of understanding disaster risk and risk assessment in this area.
4. Mechanisms to deal with the trans-boundary disasters.

The proposed session would like to focus on the wide area interested by the Silk Road and call for contributes submission on (but not limited to) the following topics:
• Disaster information collection and data sharing
• Understanding physical nature of disaster: Mechanisms, physical process
• Disaster risk assessment and reduction
• Typical trans-boundary disaster events and collaboration mechanism
• Affordable solutions for disaster management, such as early warning system, community-based risk management
• Haphazard urbanization, human activities and negative impact on disaster risk

Assessing the costs of the overall economic impacts of natural hazards, costs of prevention and costs of responses to natural hazards supply crucial information for decision-making practices in the fields of disaster risk reduction, natural hazard and risk management and climate change adaptation planning. However, the lack of empirical impact data as well as the significant diversity in methods that are currently applied in costs assessments of different natural hazards and impacted sectors make it difficult to establish comprehensive, robust and reliable cost figures. This also hinders comparisons of associated costs across countries, hazards and impacted sectors. This session aims to review current methodological approaches for assessing individual cost types (such as direct damages to housing, indirect losses, as well as costs of risk reduction) and aims to show how these methods are used in the context of various natural hazards (e.g. floods, droughts, earthquakes). We welcome submissions in the areas of assessing these various types of damage induced by any kind of natural hazard. Also, we are interested in contributions that focus on the cost-effectiveness or efficiency of risk reduction to natural hazards and adaptation to increasing weather risks that are due to climate change. Presentations are welcome for instance on model development, validation, uncertainty analysis, risk assessment frameworks as well as presentations about the application of damage models in case studies. Abstracts are sought from those involved in both the theoretical and practical aspects related to these topics.
Excellent submissions which are deemed important contributions to the session will be classified as “solicited talks”.

This session aims at collecting examples of hazard and risk databases generated worldwide. Particularly welcome are contributions presenting databases generated at different spatial scales, such as local (ex. municipalities), regional (provinces/region/counties, catchment) or sovra-national databases that comprehend different countries). Those database can include a single hazard (ex. floods) or can be multi-hazards databases. Submitted abstracts can refer to any hazard, including both natural hazards (floods, earthquakes, landslides, storms, thunderstorms, lightning, wind etc.) and man made disasters (environment pollution/contamination, industrial incidents etc.). Contributions submitted to the session can be related to past events or also to future scenarios taking into account climate change. Finally, the session is open to databases in any format, including maps built in GIS based software.


The contributions which contact author is an Early Career Scientist (ECS) are particularly encouraged.


The session is organized in cooperation with NhET, Natural hazards Early career scientists Team

Several types of dangerous phenomena (either natural or man-made) pose a serious risk in many parts of the world, causing sometimes damages to human beings, their properties or the environment. Currently, in many less developed countries, characterized by heavy concentration of people in restricted areas, poorly regulated urbanization, and uncontrolled land use, natural or man-made hazards can result in severe effects, even if its original impact was not so critical. The catastrophic impact of these phenomena can be significantly reduced using different methods of mitigation or prevention. A fundamental task in hazard evaluation includes the prediction of the area influenced by the hazardous phenomenon, of its evolution in space and time, and the understanding of triggering mechanisms. As concerns specific risk, a further issue must be analysed in terms of vulnerability, i.e. the evaluation of potential effects on exposed elements.
In recent years, several types of monitoring approaches and 2D and 3D numerical models have been developed to predict the behaviour of dangerous phenomena, starting from their response to trigger factors. Nevertheless, such tools require a detailed knowledge of several environmental factors (e.g. geological, mechanical, and hydrological) and of boundary conditions, and therefore are generally applied only in relevant cases or to small study areas.
Aiming at decreasing the risk, innovative (possibly, low-cost and non-invasive) approaches may range from modelling to monitoring, to land use planning and knowledge dissemination, to realizing remedial works. Examples of innovative methods of monitoring, modelling, and simulation (and related methods of calibration and validation, as well as of sensitivity analyses), as well as of original combinations of structural and non-structural approaches for risk reduction are welcome. Comparative discussions on potential and limits of different approaches are also within the scope of this session.
A selection of the studies presented at the Conference will be considered for publication in a special issue, after a standard phase of review.

This session aims to share innovative approaches to developing multi-hazard risk assessments and their components, and to explore their applications to disaster risk reduction. Effective disaster risk reduction practices and the planning of resilient communities requires the evaluation of multiple hazards and their interactions. This approach is endorsed by the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Multi-hazard risk and multi-hazard impact assessments look at interaction mechanisms among different natural hazards, and how spatial and temporal overlap of hazards influences the exposure and vulnerability of elements at risk. Moreover, the uncertainty associated with multi-hazard risk scenarios needs to be considered, particularly in the context of climate change and evolving vulnerabilities.

This session, therefore, aims to profile a diverse range of multi-hazard risk and impact approaches, including hazard interactions, multi-vulnerability studies, and multi-hazard exposure characterization. In covering the whole risk assessment chain, we propose that it will be easier to identify potential research gaps, synergies and opportunities for future collaborations.

We encourage abstracts which present innovative research, case study examples and commentary throughout the whole disaster risk cycle on (i) multi-hazard risk methodologies which address multi-vulnerability and multi-impact aspects; (ii) methodologies and tools for multi-hazard risk management and inclusive risk-informed decision making and planning; (iii) methodologies and tools for multi-hazard disaster scenario definition and management for (near) real-time applications; (iv) cross-sectoral approaches to multi-hazard risk, incorporating the physical, social, economic, and/or environmental dimensions; (v) uncertainty in multi-hazard risk and multi-hazard impact assessment; (vi) evaluation of multi-hazard risk under climate change and future changes; (vii) implementation of disaster risk reduction measures within a multi-hazard perspective.
The session is organized as a PICO session to facilitate interactive sharing of ideas among the participants, and to provide a space for discussion. If there is sufficient interest, we will seek to coordinate a special issue on multi-hazard risk in NHESS by gathering contributions from the session.

Global losses due to natural hazards have shown an increasing trend over the last decades, which is expected to continue due to growing exposure in disaster-prone areas and the effects of climate change. In response, recent years have seen greater worldwide commitment to reducing disaster risk. Working towards this end requires the implementation of increasingly effective disaster risk management (DRM) strategies. These must necessarily be supported by reliable estimates of risk and loss before, during, and after a disaster. In this context, innovation plays a key role.
This session aims to provide a forum to the scientific, public and private discourse on the challenges to innovate DRM. We welcome submissions on the development and application of groundbreaking technologies, big data, and innovative modeling and visualization approaches for disaster risk assessment and DRM decision-making. This includes the quantification and mapping of natural hazard risks and their components (i.e. hazard, exposure, and vulnerability), as well as the forecasting of hazard and impacts prior to a disaster event, or as it is unfolding (in real- or near real-time). We are particularly interested in contributions covering one or more of the following thematic areas in the context of disaster risk assessment and reduction: artificial intelligence and machine learning, big data, remote sensing, social media, volunteered geographic information (VGI), mobile applications, crowdsourcing, internet of things (IoT), and blockchain. We also welcome submissions exploring how these or other innovations can support real-world DRM strategies and translate into improved DRM decisions.

In recent years an increasing number of research projects focused on natural hazards (NH) and climate change impacts, providing a variety of information to end user or to scientists working on related topics.

The session aims at promoting new and innovative studies, experiences and models to improve risk management and communication about natural hazards to different end users.

End users such as decision and policy makers or the general public, need information to be easy and quickly interpretable, properly contextualized, and therefore specifically tailored to their needs. On the other hand, scientists coming from different disciplines related to natural hazards and climate change (e.g., economists, sociologists), need more complete dataset to be integrated in their analysis. By facilitating data access and evaluation, as well as promoting open access to create a level playing field for non-funded scientists, data can be more readily used for scientific discovery and societal benefits. However, the new scientific advancements are not only represented by big/comprehensive dataset, geo-information and earth-observation architectures and services or new IT communication technologies (location-based tools, games, virtual and augmented reality technologies, and so on), but also by methods in order to communicate risk uncertainty as well as associated spatio-temporal dynamic and involve stakeholders in risk management processes.

However, data and approaches are often fragmented across literature and among geospatial/natural hazard communities, with an evident lack of coherence. Furthermore, there is not a unique approach of communicating information to the different audiences. Rather, several interdisciplinary techniques and efforts can be applied in order to simplify access, evaluation, and exploration to data.

This session encourages critical reflection on natural risk mitigation and communication practices and provides an opportunity for geoscience communicators to share best methods and tools in this field. Contributions – especially from Early Career Scientists – are solicited that address these issues, and which have a clear objective and research methodology. Case studies, and other experiences are also welcome as long as they are rigorously presented and evaluated.

New and innovative abstract contributions are particularly welcomed and their authors will be invited to submit the full paper on a special issue on an related-topics Journal.

In cooperation with NhET (Natural hazard Early career scientists Team).

Critical infrastructures and other technological systems such as transportation systems, telecommunications networks, pipelines, and reservoirs are at risk of natural hazards (e.g., landslides, earthquakes, floods) in many urban and rural areas worldwide. A key to safe and affordable operations of these types of infrastructure is an in-depth knowledge of their exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards and the impact of damage experienced either locally or across the network. Fundamental understanding of hazard and risk involves (i) systematic identification and mapping of potential infrastructure exposure, (ii) integrated assessment of impact as result of damage, repair and/or mitigation, (iii) indirect losses from infrastructure disruption, (iv) consideration of interactions between hazards and/or cascades of hazards. This session welcomes contributions with a focus on natural hazards risk assessment for critical infrastructures and technological systems, and compilation of databases to record impact and elements at risk. We also encourage abstracts addressing the development and application of tools for cost modeling. The session is dedicated to contributions with national, regional, and local perspective and intends to bring together experts from science and practice as well as young scientists. We encourage poster submissions, and foresee a lively poster session couple with oral talks, and will, if appropriate, have an associated splinter discussion session.

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.

Over the past decades, many initiatives have been produced to archive the losses and datasets associated with natural perils events (EM-DAT, MunichRe NATCATservice, SwissRe Sigma, CATDAT, Dartmouth Flood Observatory etc.). On a European scale, much research has also been undertaken on a Europe-wide, country and subcountry level either using Desinventar or through other academic and insurer data archiving. However, these loss databases provide varying levels of parameters, data completeness, quality checks, spatial integration, and spatiotemporal limits. In addition, the types of data collection and definitions of loss often differ greatly between databases.

With over 3000 Open Data Initiatives around Europe (www.europeandataportal.eu/) and the World, the amount of data freely available is increasing, but censoring and data checks are required in order to ensure that the quality is reasonable. This similarly goes for online media archives and loss reporting. Even though some initial attempts have been made to connect different databases and stimulate consistency and open access (e.g. IRDR-DATA), this is a topic that needs to be explored further.

This session aims to advance efforts on loss data collection and provide a future inventory of socioeconomic loss databases for loss and risk analysis as well as to create a community linking academia, government and insurance.

Abstracts are welcomed in the following fields:-
- Socioeconomic loss databases for natural perils
- Infrastructure and sectoral loss archiving
- Online media initiatives for collecting loss data (e.g. twitter)
- Post-disaster loss analysis
- Online analysis of loss data or loss reporting
- Parametric risk transfer products
- GIS integration of past natural hazards event data
- Open data efforts for loss modelling
- Insurance loss data and loss archives
- Government post-disaster loss analysis and loss databases
- Other relevant loss-related research

Natural hazards and the associated risk are in some cases a major hindrance to economic and social growth in economically developing countries. This is particularly evident for urban areas, since rapid and uncontrolled urbanization in hazard-prone regions may result in a significant increase in risk due to insufficient spatial planning, which sometimes does not correctly consider (if at all) the impact of natural hazards, and to inadequate building practices. This session will profile the challenges faced in the developing world when doing assessments of natural hazard and risk and designing mitigation strategies. Examples of these challenges include (i) a frequent lack of data, along with difficulties in collecting it, (ii) rapid and often unplanned urban development, with building practices often neglecting the potential hazards, (iii) less regulated nature-human interactions, (iv) limited resources and capacity to undertake the most appropriate prevention and mitigation actions and to actually respond to disastrous and extreme events, (v) climate change, and (vi) difficulties in communication between science, policy and decision makers, and the general public.
Submissions to this PICO session covering all relevant topics are welcome, including but not limited to: database and archive construction; modeling, monitoring and tools for natural hazard and risk assessment; conceptual understanding of multi-hazards and nature-technology interactions; response and mitigation strategies; and communications, policy and decision-making. We particularly welcome abstracts focusing on urban areas, as well as the participation of stakeholders to share their innovative theoretical and practical ideas and success stories of how risk can be understood and addressed across economically developing countries.

2007 was a crucial year when the threshold of 50% of the population living in urban areas has been achieved and Ten years later, many hazards and often combination of hazards heat the urban environment everywhere in the world. This increase rate corresponds to a new city of 1 million people every week during the next 40 years. This exponential curve is enough to imagine that cities become more vulnerable: issues we will have to face dealing with risk management become more complex. Moreover, this quick urbanization comes with climate change uncertainties. Climate change, coupled with people and asset concentration in cities, is the worst combination to set up a sustainable natural hazard management plan. As an example, floods are considered the major natural hazard in the EU in terms of risk to people and assets. Currently, more than 40 bn € per year are spent on flood mitigation and recovery in the EU. More than 75 % of the damage caused by floods is occurring in urban areas. Climate change and concentration of population and assets in urban areas are main trends likely to affect these numbers in the near future. Global warming is expected to lead to more severe storm and rainfall events as well as to increasing river discharges and sea level rise. This means that flood risk is likely to increase significantly. At least, urban systems contain assets of high value and complex and interdependent infrastructure networks (i.e. power supplies, communications, water, transport etc.). The infrastructure networks are critical for the continuity of economic activities as well as for the people’s basic living needs. Their availability is also required for fast and effective recovery after disasters (floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides...). The severity of damage therefore largely depends on the degree that both high value assets and critical urban infrastructure are affected, either directly or indirectly.
In this context, we obtain an urban society:
• more and more menaced by a lot of hazards
• more and more vulnerable due to increasing issues and complex urban system relations;
• less and less resilient.

This session aims at discussing how researchers, practitioners and professionals are integrating the resilient concept to set up new risk management approaches and to design more resilient and flexible cities to face all types of natural hazards. Indeed, a lot of projects in the EU are now trying to use the concept of resilience to mitigate different types of risks in urban areas. This session represents a great opportunity to exchange on resilient cities and to build up a resilience framework. We are attending presentations combining different disciplines, bringing conceptual elements on resilience but also tangible applications. All methods, frameworks, tools (GIS) designed to reduce risks in cities and integrating the resilience concept are welcome in this session.

From the Urban Resilience Studies part, we are expecting communications questioning the traditional risk management approaches, based on case studies and leading to new approaches based on the concept of resilience.
From the Risk Mapping, communications have to demonstrate how risks are characterized, assessed and mapped at several scales allowing to develop operational spatial decision support systems.

The new scenario related to the global urbanization process and its impact on environmental sustainability and resilience to natural disasters, especially the ones related to the Climate Change, strongly call holistic multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial approaches for the management of urban areas and Cultural heritages.
These approach aim at providing solutions based on the integration of technologies, methodologies and best practices (remote and local monitoring, simulating and forecasting, characterizing, maintaining, restoring, etc.), with the purpose to increase the resilience of the assets, also thanks to the exploitation of dedicated ICT architectures and innovative eco-solutions and also by accounting the social and economic value of the investigated areas, especially in CH frame.
In this context, attention is also focused on the high-resolution geophysical imaging is assuming a great relevance to manage the underground and to adopt new strategies for the mitigation of geological risks.
This session represents a good forum to present, technologies best practices and share different experiences in the field of the urban areas and CH management and protection, against the multi-risk scenarios and for the different situations at European and worldwide level. Finally, great attention will be devoted to the success cases, with a specific focus on recent international projects on smart cities and Cultural heritage in Europe and other countries.

Citizen science (the involvement of the public in scientific processes) is gaining momentum in one discipline after another, thereby more and more data on biodiversity, earthquakes, weather, climate, health issues among others are being collected at different scales that can extend the frontiers of knowledge. Successful citizen observatories can potentially be scaled up in order to contribute to larger environmental and policy strategies and actions (such as the European Earth Observation monitoring systems) and to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate in environmental decision making, can raise awareness about environmental issues and can help bridge the science-society gap. Often, citizen science is seen in the context of Open Science, which is a broad movement embracing Open Data, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Source, Open Methodology, and Open Peer Review to transparently publish and share scientific research - thus leveraging Citizen Science and Reproducible Research.

Both, open science in general and citizen science in particular, pose great challenges for researchers, and to support the goals of the various openness initiatives, this session looks at what is possible nowadays and what is ready for application in geosciences. Success stories, failures, best practices and solutions will be presented, in addition to various related networks. We aim to show how researchers, citizens, funding agencies, governments and other stakeholders can benefit from citizen science and open science, acknowledging the drawbacks and highlighting the opportunities available for geoscientists.

In this session, we are looking for successful approaches of working with citizen science and open science to bridge the gap between a multitude of stakeholders in research, policy, economy, practice and society at large by finding emerging environmental issues and empowering citizens. This session shall be an open space to exchange experiences and to present either successful examples or failed efforts. Learning from others and understanding what to adopt and what to change help the participants in their own undertakings and new initiatives, so that they become future success stories.

We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:
Which approaches can be used in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences?
What are the biggest challenges and how to overcome them?
What kind of citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?
How to evaluate successful bridging of the science-society-gap?

As discussed by EGU2017 DB2 and EGU 2018 TM16, there had been an impressive series of international agreements and development of large networks of cites that call for qualitative improvements of urban systems and their interactions with their environment. The main goal of this ITS is to mobilise geoscientists, highlight their present contributions and encourage holistic approaches beyond the traditional silos of urban meteorology/hydrology/climatology/ecology/resilience, as well as some other terms.

Public information:
See also Town Hall TM 19 "Cities and Interdisciplinary Geosciences"
to be held on Thursday 11 April in room 1.85 from 19:00 to 20:00.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/session/33913

In this session, led by the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI), we invite contributions to explore diverse experiences with inter- and transdisciplinary research (ID-TD research), education and practice, as it is specifically applied in the mountain context. Taking mountains as complex social-ecological systems, they offer a concrete and spatially-defined context in which to explore how global change phenomena such as elevation dependent warming and climate change, land-use change, tourism, natural hazards, energy and social demographic change manifest and interlink simultaneously in these unique spaces. Addressing societal concerns and solutions with regards to associated impacts and implications for sustainable mountain development in response to these processes of change, requires an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to research and practice. We seek to convey and explore the mountain-specific challenges for this mode of research, education and training for IT-TD in mountains, as well as innovations to deal with these challenges. We also hope to foster a network and community of practice within the MRI, that offers a mountains perspective to IT-TD research and contribute to its theory, methodology and practice.

www.mountainresearchinitiative.org

Documenting the diversity of human responses and adaptations to climate, landscapes, ecosystems, natural disasters and the changing natural resources availability in different regions of our planet, cross-disciplinary studies in Geoarchaeology provide valuable opportunities to learn from the past. Furthermore, human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the late Quaternary, during the Anthropocene. Consequently, we must better understand the archaeological records and landscapes in context of human culture and the hydroclimate-environment nexus at different spatial and temporal scales. This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geoarchaeological case-studies that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former human-environmental interactions from the Palaeolithic period through the modern. Topics related to records of the Anthropocene from Earth and archaeological science perspectives are welcome. Furthermore, contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes in the past; defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation; distinguishing the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. Ultimately, we would like to understand how strategies of human resilience and innovation can inform our modern strategies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimate.

The originality of the session is to emphasize on the central position of human activities in environmental research (both terrestrial and atmospheric), as a driving factor and/or a response, by combining different spatio-temporal scales.
Continental environments (under various climatic conditions) experience profound societal and physical changes, which prompt scientists to investigate the complex interactions between environmental functioning and human activities.
The complexity originates from the multiplicity of factors involved and resulting spatial and temporal variabilities, of their multiple origins in time (historical integration) and/or legacy.
As a consequence, causal links in this societal-environmental relationship are difficult to establish but, it is fundamental to understand these causal links to adapt, conserve, protect, preserve and restore the functioning of the environment as well as human activities. From this point of view, the geographical approach highlights the relationships (or their absence) through the expression of the spatial and temporal trajectories of the processes studied by clarifying the observation of signals.
The ensuing issues on the relevance of indicators used in different supports of nowadays research (imagery, archives, models ...) are raised as a methodological open up.
In this context, oral and poster presentations dealing with any studies related to the following issue(s) are welcome:
- human forcing on the environments and environmental resilience
- response of socio-systems to environmental changes
- scenarios, prospective and retrospective models of the evolution of environments and human activities
- management modes (adaptive management) of anthropised continental environments, reciprocity, mutual benefits (ecosystem services), positive feedback

The session may include the following methodological aspects:
- in situ metrology,
- statistical and numerical modeling,
- spatio-temporal analysis,
- remote Sensing,
- surveys,
- landscape analysis,
- paleoenvironmental approach,
at various scales:
- spatial scales, from the station and site through watershed,
- time scales from the event to the Holocene.