The domino effect: the future of quantifying compounding events in deltas

The UNISDR Sendai Framework Priority 1 (Understanding Disaster Risk) advocates that research and development in disaster risk management should be moving towards more comprehensive multi-hazard approaches (UNISDR, 2015). Currently, however, there exist limited guidelines or methods in science for assessing natural hazard risks whilst considering their complex dynamics and interactions. Interactions between different natural hazards (e.g., floods, volcanos, earthquakes) can exacerbate their associated risks by influencing any one or more of the three factors of the risk framework: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. For example, interactions between natural hazards can be related to one natural hazard increasing the likelihood of another kind, one natural hazard leaving society more exposed to the next, or one natural hazard leaving the exposed society more vulnerable to impacts from the next.
Within this session, the organizing committee and four speakers and panelists brought this important aspect of natural hazard risks to the attention of the UR community. We highlighted the importance of interactions between natural hazards through case studies in the Philippines, The Netherlands and the United States, and engaged in discussions with the audience on the relevance of compounding events to society, how an “event” should be presented to stakeholders in a useful way, and the importance of collecting more evidence and data that can relate impacts to a multi-hazard cascade.