ITS4.3/NH13.12 | Innovative integrated approaches to mitigate risks due to weather extremes and climate change
Innovative integrated approaches to mitigate risks due to weather extremes and climate change
Convener: Gilles Grandjean | Co-convener: Eckert Nicolas

Between 1980 and 2022, weather- and climate-related extremes caused economic losses of assets estimated at EUR 650 billion in the EU. To face this challenge, increasing with ongoing warming and the continuous rise of the number, value and interconnexion of assets, it is necessary to stimulate and coordinate the European effort on disaster risk reduction (DRR), explicitly accounting for the changing socio-environmental conditions. To this aim, innovative holistic and integrative approaches are required including reinforced collaborations between -among others- geosciences, climate sciences, engineering, data and digital sciences, and human and social sciences (in particular geography, history, economic and financial sciences, behavioral sciences). These different disciplines are now heavily involved in DRR, but still work too much in silos and / or, sometimes, without direct interaction with society. Grounding on the approach developed in the France 2030 Risks-IRIMA program, we propose a session that emphasizes inter and transdisciplinary methodological approaches of DRR, so as to better detect, quantify and anticipate risks due to weather extremes and climate change. The aim is to understand their impact resulting from extreme events, multiple risks, cascading effects, multi-scale dynamics, etc. in an explicit non–stationary framework able to account for the full complexity at play. Challenges include the improvement of the coupling between human and socio-economic issues and the physical components of risks, the development of adapted risk measures and quantification tools, better use of data and citizen knowledge, and of new technologies, particularly those of information science, as well as the development of risk projections at different temporal horizons. Also, the seamless chain between data acquisition and assimilation to modelling, decision support and policy implementation for crisis management and anticipation of future risks related to climate change and anthropization should be reinforced. Through this renewed effort, research on risk science should strongly contribute to the sustainable transformation of society, improving altogether societal well-being, risk awareness, and reduction of the social and economic impacts of crises, and fostering innovation at the science-society interface.

Between 1980 and 2022, weather- and climate-related extremes caused economic losses of assets estimated at EUR 650 billion in the EU. To face this challenge, increasing with ongoing warming and the continuous rise of the number, value and interconnexion of assets, it is necessary to stimulate and coordinate the European effort on disaster risk reduction (DRR), explicitly accounting for the changing socio-environmental conditions. To this aim, innovative holistic and integrative approaches are required including reinforced collaborations between -among others- geosciences, climate sciences, engineering, data and digital sciences, and human and social sciences (in particular geography, history, economic and financial sciences, behavioral sciences). These different disciplines are now heavily involved in DRR, but still work too much in silos and / or, sometimes, without direct interaction with society. Grounding on the approach developed in the France 2030 Risks-IRIMA program, we propose a session that emphasizes inter and transdisciplinary methodological approaches of DRR, so as to better detect, quantify and anticipate risks due to weather extremes and climate change. The aim is to understand their impact resulting from extreme events, multiple risks, cascading effects, multi-scale dynamics, etc. in an explicit non–stationary framework able to account for the full complexity at play. Challenges include the improvement of the coupling between human and socio-economic issues and the physical components of risks, the development of adapted risk measures and quantification tools, better use of data and citizen knowledge, and of new technologies, particularly those of information science, as well as the development of risk projections at different temporal horizons. Also, the seamless chain between data acquisition and assimilation to modelling, decision support and policy implementation for crisis management and anticipation of future risks related to climate change and anthropization should be reinforced. Through this renewed effort, research on risk science should strongly contribute to the sustainable transformation of society, improving altogether societal well-being, risk awareness, and reduction of the social and economic impacts of crises, and fostering innovation at the science-society interface.