Increasing impacts from natural hazard events have been observed over the last decades in many regions. For the future, a further rise of losses and damages is expected as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change, increasing exposure and insufficient attention put to reducing vulnerabilities. Hence, the further reduction of disaster mortality, number of people affected, economic and intangible losses remain high priority targets for disaster risk management and adaptation as stipulated in the Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework with a view also towards learning from observed events. In this regard, the provisions of effective emergency response capabilities, as well as informed adaptation planning, are relevant issues on the research agenda.
Event-centered multi-disciplinary forensic investigations offer unique opportunities to gain insights and to better understand risk systems, dynamics including cascading effects as well as interactions between hazard, exposure and vulnerability as the key drivers of risk. Monitoring and documenting natural hazard events, its impacts and causes is an important element and a valuable basis for learning from disasters, revising current risk management strategies, as well as improving risk analyses and risk modelling. In addition, rapid impact and cost assessment of natural hazard events may provide decision-makers with richer information to make more informed and timely decisions on emergency measures and recovery. Another key aspect that needs to be better studied and communicated in line with forensics and rapid assessments is climate attribution of observed extreme events, such as heatwaves, storms or floods. This line of study has emerged as a particular field of event assessment concerned with understanding and quantifying to what extent anthropogenic climate forcing has changed the probability of occurrence or magnitude of events with high impact.
All of these mentioned pose important and interesting challenges to the research community across disciplines. For this aim this session invites contributions on a) event monitoring and disaster forensics, b) rapid impact and cost assessment of hazard events including new methods and technologies, and c) climate attribution for all types of natural hazards. Abstracts that highlight analyses of recent events, methodological advances or practical implementations with an inter-disciplinary perspective are particularly encouraged.