Tuesday, December 18, 2018

INQUIMUS Workshop: a new generation of multi-hazard risk, vulnerability and resilience assessments

INQUIMUS, latin for “we say”, is a workshop series initiated by Z_GIS and EURAC, which was hosted this year ‘on tour’ in Venice, Italy at Ca’Fascori University . The workshop was titled “Methods and tools to assess multi-hazard risk, vulnerability and resilience” and focused on how quantitative and qualitative assessment methods could boost a transition toward a new generation of multi-hazard risk, vulnerability and resilience assessments. It included four State of the art (SOTA) talks followed by poster presentations and gave place for in-depth discussions among researchers from around the globe and various fields. Topics were addressed by scientists and practitioners working in different fields (geographers, physicists, statisticians, informatics, economists, environmental, social scientists etc.) to advance concepts and sharing of best practices in different application contexts (environmental management, disaster risk reduction, emergency planning and climate change adaptation).

Key outcomes of the workshop
Multi-risk is a reality, and there are merging risk and threats to infrastructure and humans. We need to understand the complexities and interlinkages between hazard exposure and vulnerability. Risk assessment is needed as there are growing cascading effects and dependencies. Several gaps in risk assessment were pointed out during the discussions: i.e there is no clear definition of ‘multi-risk’, Multi-risk is multi-disciplinary, - and there is a need for different stakeholders to create a framework to carry out risk assessments. Innovative aspects in multi risk as for instance cascade effect tools/ artificial intelligence and how IT can help in understanding multi-risk dynamics and validation were disscussed. With the use of technology, we can represent uncertainties in a better way and improve vulnerability dynamic mapping.






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