Natural Hazards

El Niño shouldn’t stay in the classroom: Why everyone should understand one of Earth’s most influential climate patterns

Hedieh Soltanpour September 14, 2026

Floods in one region. Droughts in another. Wildfires intensifying across already dry landscapes, while elsewhere intense rainfall triggers landslides and infrastructure disruption. At first glance, these hazard events may seem entirely unrelated. After all, what could a flood on one side of the world possibly have to do with a drought on the other? Yet many of these seemingly disconnected events c ...[Read More]

Joining the dots: From overlooked disaster impacts to inclusive disaster risk reduction

Harriet Thompson September 7, 2026

A note from the Natural Hazards Division editorial team We would like to open this blog post with our sincere condolences in response to the devastating multi-hazard flash flood that occurred in Nepal and Tibet in late August. In the face of such suffering, messages like this risk sounding hollow. Still, we, as the Natural Hazards Division editorial team, wish to express our solidarity with all fa ...[Read More]

Practical Use of Natural Hazard Monitoring Systems during Escalating Risk Scenarios

Robert Noyes August 18, 2026

Mountain hazard regimes are fundamentally shifting. There is consensus not just among concerned scientists, but practitioners of risk management, that mountain hazard regimes are affected by warmer temperatures and intensifying precipitation events. The effects of these changes are further amplified by increasing population density in known hazard zones; with more infrastructure and human settleme ...[Read More]

When multiple hazards interact and the data doesn’t: The multi-hazard modelling problem nobody wants to talk about

Pablo Lopez Filun June 15, 2026

There is a quiet contradiction at the heart of natural hazard science. The regions most exposed to multi-hazard events are precisely the regions where we know the least. The Global South (comprising lower- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean) is disproportionately affected by climate-related natural hazards, yet it is largely underrepresented in climate res ...[Read More]

Knowing better, but still losing more: why disaster risk reduction breaks down

Sven Fuchs, Konstantinos Karagiorgos, Margreth Keiler, Lars Nyberg, Maria Papathoma-Köhle and Annemarie Polderman May 11, 2026

The surviving house in Pacific Palisades became one of the most discussed images from the 2025 California wildfires (Fig. 1). What makes it scientifically interesting, though, is not that it survived. It is that many of the features associated with the house’s survival – a more fire-resistant exterior, stronger windows, and details that reduce ember entry – are already well known. This case points ...[Read More]

Assessment of multiple predictors to the psychological effects of flooding for residential and business sectors in Peninsular Malaysia

Shabir Ahmad Kabirzad, Balqis M. Rehan, Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell, Zed Zulkafli, Badronnisa Yusuf, Bakti Hasan-Basri and Mohd Ekhwan Toriman April 29, 2026

Experiencing a severe flood can lead to profound emotional and mental distress, including anxiety, depression, and long-term stress. These mental health struggles often stem from the trauma of losing cherished possessions, disrupted daily routines, or the terrifying threat to personal safety and the lives of loved ones. Yet, because mental well-being is an “intangible” loss, it is freq ...[Read More]

Multi-Risk Forecasting: Operational Reality or Scientific Ambition?

Christopher J. White, Hedieh Soltanpour, Mario Bianco, Emma Brown and Darren Lumbroso April 27, 2026

Reflections from a workshop on multi-risk impact-based forecasting and warning systems for weather-related hazards. With mounting evidence that hazards rarely occur in isolation, the question is no longer whether multi-risk impact-based forecasting and warning systems are needed, but how to build them [1]. Yet, moving beyond single-hazard thinking towards genuinely multi-hazard and t ...[Read More]

From Seismic Signals to Safer Trains: Italy’s First Earthquake Early Warning System for High-Speed Railways

Aldo Zollo and Simona Colombelli March 16, 2026

Earthquakes remain among the most disruptive natural hazards worldwide, capable of causing sudden loss of life, severe economic damage, and long-lasting societal impacts. One of the most effective tools developed in recent decades to mitigate these effects is Earthquake Early Warning (EEW), a real-time monitoring strategy that exploits a fundamental physical property of earthquakes: seismic waves ...[Read More]

Same hills, different rules: why urban and rural landslides should not be considered together?

Zakaria Matougui February 20, 2026

Cities are expanding faster than ever, often onto steep and unstable terrain. As urban areas grow, landslides increasingly threaten homes, roads, and critical infrastructure. To manage this risk, scientists produce landslide susceptibility maps, which estimate where landslides are most likely to occur. These maps are widely used by planners and decision-makers. But there is a quiet assumption buil ...[Read More]

Extreme hourly rainfall is increasing in Italy: insights from high-resolution climate reanalysis

Francesco Cavalleri February 2, 2026

Image generated using ChatGPT (AI-generated image).

Intense rainfall lasting only a few hours is often enough to trigger natural hazards such as flash floods and landslides, leading to severe damage to infrastructure. These short-lived events are among the most dangerous natural hazards in the Mediterranean region, yet they are also among the hardest to study. Their small spatial scale and brief duration mean that they are often missed or underesti ...[Read More]