Populations on Earth are constantly exposed to Natural Hazards. Resilience levels of our communities are depending on the ability to assess Hazard, Vulnerability and Exposition for the specific risks linked to the living Earth and to its modifications imposed by the society’s developments. The capacity to respond to Disaster Risks is strictly related to the possibility to monitor, model, and forecast the cascading effects that originate from potentially catastrophic natural events. Prevention and protection against specific Natural Hazards – like effectiveness in post-event interventions – can nowadays be more powerful thanks to smart systems in the contexts of urban and land planning and maintenance. The knowledge of our territories, on their both anthropic and natural features, is a first step to define the systemic vulnerability to each direct or cascading risk, while most time-dependent Natural Hazards can be assessed by environmental monitoring integrated with an accurate knowledge of the system Earth at local scale. The response of contemporary Society to Natural Hazards is included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a topic of Goal-11, “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.
This Special Issue aims to collect and disseminate the most relevant research concerning the study and characterization of Natural Hazards also in view of the possible future scenarios induced by Climate Change. The topic also includes the impacts that hazards have on the human community and the environment, the strategies for the mitigation of the dangerousness, both in terms of methodologies aimed at the forecast and prediction of the calamitous phenomena and the best practices to develop and manage early warning, surveillance and mitigation systems, having regard to technological innovation. Another important theme addressed in the context of the Special Issue concerns the communication strategies, both for the purpose of alerting and environmental education addressed to stakeholders and citizens. Communication techniques and related procedures for dissemination of alert products are the link between experts and end users, a fundamental aspect for an effective action of prevention, mitigation and resilience against the Natural Hazards.
Key themes will include:
- Avalanches
- Cascading effects
- Channelized debris flows
- Climate change induced disasters, the scenarios, trends and patterns
- Costal erosion and flooding
- Cyclonic storms
- Desertification
- Disaster management
- Disaster Risk Reduction
- Drought
- Early Warning Systems
- Earthquakes
- Economy and policy of natural hazard and risk
- Environmental monitoring
- Extraterrestrial hazards
- Floods
- Glacial hazards
- Hailstorms
- Hazard and risk communication
- Heat waves
- Ice storms
- Landslides
- Permafrost degradation
- Remote sensing
- Risk cycle assessment and management
- Sinkholes
- Smart systems for disasters response
- Societal resilience
- Subsidence
- Sustainable development
- Tornados
- Tsunamis
- Urban flooding
- Volcanic eruptions
- Wildfires
