Several subsystems of the Earth have been suggested to possibly react abruptly at critical levels of anthropogenic forcing. Examples of such potential Tipping Elements include the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the polar ice sheets, tropical and boreal forests, as well as the tropical monsoon systems. Interactions between the different Tipping Elements may either have stabilizing or destabilizing effects on the other subsystems, potentially leading to cascades of abrupt transitions. The critical forcing levels at which abrupt transitions occur have recently been associated with Tipping Points.

It is paramount to determine the critical forcing levels (and the associated uncertainties) beyond which the systems in question will abruptly change their state, with potentially devastating climatic, ecological, and societal impacts. For this purpose, we need to substantially enhance our understanding of the dynamics of the Tipping Elements and their interactions, on the basis of paleoclimatic evidence, present-day observations, and models spanning the entire hierarchy of complexity. Moreover, to be able to mitigate - or prepare for - potential future transitions, early warning signals have to be identified and monitored in both observations and models.

This multidisciplinary session invites contributions that address Tipping Points in the Earth system from the different perspectives of all relevant disciplines, including

- the mathematical theory of abrupt transitions in (random) dynamical systems,
- paleoclimatic studies of past abrupt transitions,
- data-driven and process-based modelling of past and future transitions,
- methods to anticipate critical transitions from data
- the implications of abrupt transitions for climate sensitivity and response,
- ecological and socioeconomic impacts
- decision theory in the presence of uncertain Tipping Point estimates and uncertain impacts

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 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. 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.
This session also addresses the escalating challenges posed by climate change in arid areas. These regions face intensifying droughts, heatwaves, fires, and occasional unexpected flood events, as recently observed in the Arabian Peninsula. This session welcomes contributions exploring comprehensive strategies focusing on future climate forecasts and innovative practices for both mitigation and adaptation to climatic extremes. Central to the discussion are climate variability and climate change impacts specific to arid environments, emphasizing water-vegetation-climate interactions and their implications for the resilience of ecosystems and society. Participants will delve into the potential and the foreseen impacts of water management practices as well as climate change mitigation practices such as carbon capturing and intensification of renewable energy in arid regions. This session underscores the critical role of drought monitoring systems, weather forecasts and climate projections in supporting the aforementioned practices as well as in predicting and preparing for extreme events that could jeopardize them, informing proactive risk reduction policies.

Climate change and environmental degradation constitute a growing threat to the stability of societal and economical systems. The observed and anticipated escalation in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events under future emission scenarios, combined with the projected long-term shifts in climate patterns and consequential impacts on biodiversity, have the potential to significantly affect specific sectors such as insurance and finance leading to significant economic damages on a local to global scale.

In recognition of this challenge climate risk assessments have experienced amplified attention in both the academic and private spheres, leading to initiatives such as the ‘Network for Greening the Financial Sector’ (NGFS) and the ‘Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure’ (TCFD) and a growth in climate risk services aiming at setting standards and frameworks as well as the provision of comprehensive climate impact information for the private sector and financial institutions.

The need for more adequate risk assessment poses new academic challenges: the accurate representing extreme events and their compounding and cascading effects on high spatial resolution and the integration of non-linearities associated with tipping elements in the climate system to avoid an underestimation of physical climate risks.

Therefore, providing a platform to foster interactions between scientists, economists and financial experts is urgently needed. With the goal of facilitating such dialogue, this session aims at providing a platform for actors from academia and the private sector to exchange information on strategies for assessing climate risk.

The session is organised under three main pillars:
-Physical Climate Risks: Trends, Processes and Modelling
-Identifying and Managing Climate Risks
-Quantifying Damages and Impacts from Climate Risks

We encourage submissions on:
Innovative climate risk modeling for
-Chronic and Acute Climate Risks
-Compound Events and Cascading Impacts
-Model Evaluation of Extreme weather events
AI and Machine learning frameworks for
-Bias adjustment Methods
-Downscaling Methods
-Fast climate models and emulators
Climate hazard indicators and their projections for specific sectors:
-Food, Energy, Insurance, Real Estate
-Supply chains
Impact data collection and empirical damage assessments
Global and local damage functions
Climate – Nature nexus

The current climate change has been shown to exacerbate extreme weather events, such as storms with exceptionally strong winds, temperature extremes, heavy rainfall, and flooding. Climate scenarios predict an intensification and increased frequency of these extremes that can have destructive impacts on human activities. Not surprisingly, the United Nations states that 'extreme weather events have come to dominate the disaster landscape of the 21st century' (McClean, 2020). In this context, multi-hazard and multi-risk modelling and data collection of climate extremes are key to enhancing disaster prevention, risk reduction, and adaptation to climate change impacts; thus, they have become imperative requirements for our society.

Modelling hazard and risk is a challenging problem because of the complexity of the environmental system and the different temporal and spatial scales under analysis (e.g. regional, local and building scales). In addition, multiple weather hazards need to be considered at the same time for an effective assessment of the risks (and the enhancement of resilience) of different assets. Among the most impacted consequences of climate extremes are the deterioration, loss of functionality, or even structural damage to buildings and infrastructures crucial to society. These infrastructures play a crucial role in socio-economic activities. Still, the progress in adaptation planning of such critical assets remains low. This can also be ascribed to the lack of actionable tools for multi-risk analysis.

Addressing these complex challenges necessarily requires interdisciplinary work between experts from climate and atmospheric science, materials and structural analysts, and social and economic science. The aim is to bring together and present in an integrated manner the latest research advances in the assessment, mitigation, and adaptation of hazards and risks associated with extreme events for assets. The session encompasses various topics including modelling and quantification of meteorological stresses with numerical or experimental techniques; risk assessment of extreme events; and assessment of social, cultural, and economic impacts on society. The session emphasizes methodologies for determining meteorological exposures of assets, forecasts of near future extreme events impacts, operational models for damage and structural stability of infrastructures, and analysis of direct and indirect socio-economic cascading damages.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified ecosystems, that address socio-economic and environmental challenges, while simultaneously providing human well-being, resilience and biodiversity benefits (UNEA, 2022). Within the framework of a global ecosystem approach, NbS must encompass ecological, societal, political, economic and cultural issues at all levels, from the individual to the collective, from local to national, from the public or private sphere.

As recently highlighted by IPCC and IPBES, climate change and biodiversity degradation cannot be separated, and must be considered together. For this reason, this session is especially focused on the way NbS can act as climate change adaptation solutions. Considering various ecosystems (marine and coastal, urban, cropland, mountainous, forest, rivers and lakes,.,), NbS as interventions for climate adaptation includes the adaptation to: sea level rise (flooding and erosion), changes of the water regime (floods, droughts, water quality and availability), rise in temperatures (heat waves, forest fires, drought, energy consumption), plant stress and increase of pests (variation of yields, forest dieback), to minimize their associated social and economic negative impacts.

Therefore, this session aims to promote discussion integrating multiple disciplines related to ecosystem restoration, preservation and management, to put forward the complexity that is often hidden by simplifying hypotheses and approaches (sector-based silo approach, homogeneity of environments, ...).

Specific topics of interest are the followings:
- Complexity: nature of ecosystems and the risk of oversimplification, interconnection between NbS and complementary areas, consideration of uncertainties (future climate and associated impacts...)
- Scales: spatial scales with the integration of NbS in their environment, and temporal scales considering sustainability over time, variability of bio-physical processes and climate change effects
- Ecosystem services: understanding the bio-geophysical processes, spatial shift between the location of NbS and the location of beneficiaries, modification under climate change (threshold, inflection point), co-benefits or on the contrary degradation and negative effects
- Assessment and indicators: measurement and modelling protocols to evaluate NbS performances, capacity to measure the complexity, resilience and stability of the solutions.
- Co-development with stakeholders, engaging civil society, and translating NBS into education and school curricula, which alignes with objectives and supported by the IAHS Helping Decade

Nature based Solutions to address growing risk of Urban Heat Islands interacting with Climate Change

Convenors:
Shalini Dhyani (SD, Female, India), Jagdish Krishnaswamy (JK, Male, India), Dilip Naidu (DN, Male, India), Soojeong Myeong (SM, Female, S. Korea) and Sharon Onyango (SO, Female, Kenya)


Institutional affiliations:

SD: Environmental Impact Assessment, Audit and Policy, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur India
JK: School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru India
SM: Korea Environment Institute, Sejong, S. Korea
SO: Department of Landscape and Environmental Sciences, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya
This session on Nature based solutions to address growing risk of urban heat islands interacting with climate change aims to foster interdisciplinary research related to restoring green-blue infrastructure across cities in different continents, using of remote sensing and geo-spatial approaches, modeling, socio-ecological studies to put forward the complexity that is often hidden by simplifying hypotheses and approaches (sector-based silo approach, homogeneity of environments, etc). In this session we welcome interdisciplinary papers which explore the risk, and challenges related to UHI effects and the potential cases of implementing NbS as a mitigation approach.

The complexity of natural hazards and their impacts on society calls for a comprehensive approach to disaster risk reduction and resilience. This scientific session will present cutting-edge research and insights from transdisciplinary projects that address multi-risk challenges. Focused on the Disaster-Resilient Societies (DRS) and Multi-Risk Thematic Areas, the session will showcase innovative methodologies and findings from European-funded projects such as The HuT (https://thehut-nexus.eu), PARATUS (https://www.paratus-project.eu), MYRIAD (https://www.myriadproject.eu), and DIRECTED (https://directedproject.eu). We also welcome contributions from other projects and organisations to enrich the discussion. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how integrating diverse technical and social science perspectives can enhance our ability to mitigate and adapt to complex disaster risks. Participants are encouraged to join the short course and splinter meeting that complement this session, creating a unified path that allows for engaging in the entire programme or specific parts based on individual interests.

Despite extensive efforts, losses from natural hazards are still on the rise. While climate change plays a crucial role in increasing the frequency and magnitude of many hazards, other factors such as changes in exposure and vulnerability remain poorly understood. This session will delve into the reasons behind and seek to identify the key risk drivers responsible. Addressing these challenges is vital for developing sustainable risk reduction strategies and providing societies with long-term adaptation plans to effectively manage climate risks.
The frequency and magnitude of many natural hazards are evolving, with climate change exacerbating these changes. However, the dynamic nature of hazard triggers and cascading effects is often overlooked in current mitigation and adaptation strategies. Most existing mitigation and adaptation measures, including technical interventions and land-use planning, rely on static concepts, whereas the effects of hazards are inherently dynamic.
Exposure is a critical component of risk assessment, and it is likely to increase in the future as human settlements expand and industrial activities intensify. However, there is limited information on the spatio-temporal dynamics of exposure at different scales. To accurately quantify the evolution of risk, this information must be analysed alongside the effectiveness of existing technical mitigation measures. This analysis is also essential for contributing to discussions on the impacts of climate change on exposed communities, particularly in the context of shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs).
Understanding the vulnerability of elements at risk is another key objective in reducing future losses. Current models used to describe vulnerability require further validation through empirical data, laboratory experiments, and alternative assessment methods. Integrating observational methods other techniques and incorporating additional dimensions of vulnerability, particularly institutional vulnerability, is essential.
We invite submissions that integrate these topics, including hazard and exposure analysis, vulnerability assessment, adaptation strategies, and disaster risk reduction tools. The session will focus on the interactions between landscape processes and human activities, promoting transferable and adaptive approaches to risk management. Contributions should aim to identify the key risk drivers behind natural hazard losses through a holistic examination of risk components.

Embedding climate resilient development principles (IPCC, 2022) in the regional and local context means ensuring that any sectoral (e.g. agriculture) or cross-sectoral (e.g. built environment) transformation contributes to achieve simultaneously carbon neutrality, adaptation and well-being for people and nature. It is a complex and systemic challenge that requires new integrative models of research and practice that can accelerate the pace of change with respect to conventional approaches.
Policymakers, practitioners and communities who aim to achieve a just climate transition must pursue systemic change across sectors by integrating different methods and co-creation practices to support science- and community-driven transformative approaches. This critical inter-disciplinary and multi-dimensional dialogue is aimed at integrating carbon neutrality and adaptation with a focus on context-specific climate change impacts (to expand local priorities for risk adaptation) and systems transformation (energy, mobility, land use, construction, agriculture, etc.) while creating value for local stakeholders and assessing the full range of social, economic and environmental co-benefits of local development processes across sectors.
The session will bring together representative from relevant Horizon Europe projects exploring inter-disciplinary methods and tools to support climate resiliet development at regional and local level.

Why ITS?
Achieving climate resilience in a timeframe compatible with major international agendas requires no “demonstrators” but a radical change in the “business as usual”, bringing equity and environmental justice hand in hand with measurable impacts on climate and environmental goals.
Inter-disciplinary approaches and methods presented in this session are aimed at overcoming both the limits of conventional scientific approaches (e.g. Siloed VS Collaborative; Complicated VS Complex; Patended VS Open), and those of conventional community-driven approaches (e.g. Isolated VS Widespread; Small scale VS Scalable and Replicable; Discussion VS Co-production).

Climate and land-use changes are reshaping ecosystems by disrupting interactions between vegetation, soils, and abiotic factors. These changes influence ecosystem stability, resource distribution, and resilience to disturbances. Vegetation pattern formation—emerging from plant-environment interactions—plays a key role in regulating water, nutrients, and soil conservation, particularly in vulnerable landscapes such as drylands, wetlands, forests, and rangelands. While some theories suggest vegetation patterns signal impending desertification, others propose they enhance resilience by localizing external stresses. Similarly, landform-soil-vegetation feedbacks contribute to ecosystem stability, influencing carbon capture, soil erosion, and landscape connectivity.

Understanding the origin and role of these patterns in ecosystem resilience against environmental stresses represents a significant endeavor that only multidisciplinary research can achieve. This session invites theoretical, empirical, and modeling studies on vegetation-soil interactions, ecogeomorphology, ecohydrology, and the implications of spatial organization for ecosystem resilience. We aim to bridge theory and observation, fostering collaboration across disciplines to better understand landscape responses to climatic and anthropogenic pressures.