Cascading Hazards – the challenges to understand interactions

Cascading hazards come into focus of hazard and risk research in the last 15 years and is strongly connected to studies on multi-hazards and compound hazards. Unexpected cascading events and related casualties and losses of properties draw the attention to consider the possible amplified risks induced by cascading hazards.

The contribution will focus in the first part on key concepts in relation to cascading hazards and will address briefly the challenges which may occur due to the general terminological ambiguity because the term cascading hazards tends to be used interchangeably with multi-hazards, cascading events, cascading disasters, or compound hazards or events. The main focus is on the analyses of different types of interactions which may occur during a cascading hazard events and their dependency on time and space. In the second part, the main question addresses the influence of climate and environmental change on cascading hazards including the occurrence of cascading hazards, changes of types of cascading hazards or interactions within the cascading hazard event. Current challenges regarding the approaches used to analyse and better understand cascading hazards are presented as well as first ideas to answer the questions what is missing, what is needed and how it can be used for hazard and risk analysis/management.