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Natural hazards come from geosphere processes combined with the atmosphere and hydrosphere. Resilience is the ability of a population to resist and adapt to these natural hazards and even profit from them. Geoheritage is the appreciation and characterisation of geological features in relation to humanity. Geoheritage can be used to communicate natural hazards and relate them to risk, and could be especially valuable for developing countries, where resources are limited. This is done through geosites, the basic building block of geoheritage. A geosite is a location or area (e.g. outcrop or landscape feature). An area can be divided into different geosites, as basic units of the geology and landscape. This division provides a way of characterising the whole equation of risk (e.g. hazards + vulnerability = risk), as in each geosite information on all aspects of human presence (and biosphere) can be integrated. The geosite in this way becomes the unit area to characterise the whole risk problem, and can be used to work on all aspects of resilience in one coherent way.We provide examples of our first attempts of holistic geosite mapping that will be used for a global project called Geoheritage for Resilience. This is a network to develop geosites around the world in areas of natural risk that can be developed to describe geosites of special interest, protect them and use them to develop integrated risk assessment, mitigation and communication strategies. We provide examples from project sites such as the Macolod Corridor (Philippines), Dallol (Ethiopia), Ometepe Island (Nicaragua). Each site will be developed according to the local possibilities and resources. However, with a global network run via scientific social media, each site can help the other and pool resources, to maximise the development of geosites for resilience worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst numerous natural hazards, flooding annually causes the highest economic and societal losses in Europe. A reason for these losses are rising number of exposed assets in risk prone areas. Additionally, changes in extreme hydro-meteorological events impact the flood-resilience of such cities. Complementing government led protection and adaptation measures, private measures (dry- and wet-flood proofing, barrier systems, deflection of flood discharge, etc.) have been seen to decrease potential damages by flood events. Nevertheless, private protection and adaptation measures are not always adequately implemented, which is amongst others, the result of insufficient communication pathways between flood authorities and homeowners. The aim of the FLOODLABEL project is to increase the resilience and the adaptive capacity of cities in a smart manner. The FLOODLABEL is a prototype tool which aims at informing homeowners about their individual flood risks and to support the planning and decision-making of experts and local governments in risk management processes. By developing the FLOODLABEL tool both private stakeholders and homeowners can be involved in decision-making processes to enhance the resilience of communities. Hence, this study focuses on how homeowners in flood prone areas can be motivated to realise private measures by considering their knowledge about hazards, their risk behaviour and individual communication strategies wanted. The case study areas are sites in neighbourhoods that are prone to different types of flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria. In these areas, the FLOODLABEL is explored and tested in terms of its social and technical functionality as well as its ability to improve risk communication. Preliminary results give insight into current protection and adaptation strategies realised by inhabitants and the different needs of risk communication depending on their risk behaviour. Further expected results are to integrate insights to improve communication strategies to provide tailored information. This can additionally be applied to advance planning support systems in risk management strategies in order to move towards more flood resilient communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists often struggle in communicating geoscience content to non-specialists, especially when it relates to complex or contentious issues. A greater understanding of people's mental models of the subsurface and of geological processes can help develop successful communication strategies between geoscientists and public audiences. Using a mixed-methods approach, we compared mental models of the subsurface, mining/quarrying, drilling, and flooding between experts (geoscientists; n=24) and non-experts (lay people; n=38). Experts' mental models displayed evidence for scientific, technical knowledge, as opposed to the traditional, lay expertise in the mental modes of non-experts. Both groups included a combination of knowledge and subjective elements in their mental models, but geoscientists included more human elements (e.g. presence of humans in the sketches), indicating a departure from the detached, factual objectivity usually associated with the rhetoric of science. These differences can be used to inform two-way dialogue between geoscientists and non-geoscientists, which is imperative in dealing with the energy and climatic challenges we currently face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RiverCare is a 6 year Dutch research program that improves our fundamental understanding of river behavior for integrated flood risk management and collaborative maintenance. During-mid 2014 and December 2019, over 20 researchers from 5 universities have studied the hydro-morphological and ecological consequences of multiple river interventions that aim at reducing flood water levels and improving the spatial quality in Dutch rivers. As part of RiverCare, a multimedia strategy was developed to increase the accessibility of contributions and to get feedback from practitioners about the potential use of RiverCare (scientific) products in the Netherlands and abroad.The communication strategy is a joint effort between the RiverCare program (https://kbase.ncr-web.org/rivercare/) and the Netherlands Centre for River studies (NCR) (https://ncr-web.org/) to further discuss our work with the scientific and practical community and extend communication efforts after the program ends. The strategy includes an online knowledge-base that gives an overview about how methods and tools contribute towards more sustainable management. We use participatory methods for a user-centered design and carry out systematic evaluation to identify needs for improvement. Usability tests over the iterative design process were carried out with input of students and representatives of the intended audience who helped to improve the navigation and tailor content. The design aims to help users find out the most interesting project for their needs by means of an infographic, videos and an interactive map. For each project, researchers give an overview of their project outputs, innovative aspects and status for day-to-day practice while providing links to the storylines for practice, research outputs details including the supporting datasets. To increase the reach, RiverCare newsletters, blogs and news articles are being distributed through the NCR mailing list and other water platforms, both in the Netherlands as abroad.Systematic evaluation has been useful to tailor communication efforts and to give advice for other research programs in the field of environmental and risk management. Challenges are to reach a larger but interested audience to prove the effectiveness of our approach, to draw recommendations for improving current practices per main research themes and to explore the possibilities to further apply our results in other locations. Therefore, to hear and discuss the program's outcome, its implications and relevance, we will be inviting interested practitioners to explore our site, give feedback about their interests and register to the final RiverCare symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly more research data are becoming available to open new possibilities for practitioners in developing sustainable river management strategies. However, the format and visuals used in scientific publications are often not suitable to highlight the context of research and the contribution to practice. The temporal or spatial scale of the sustainability issues and their consequences often makes difficult to imagine visual examples that explain the practical contribution, the assumptions or limitations behind. To improve the accessibility of research findings and aid discussions with practitioners at the science policy-interface, we further developed and formally evaluated a visual storytelling approach as part of the RiverCare online communication strategy. RiverCare is a Dutch research program in which 20 researchers from 5 universities study the hydro-morphological and ecological consequences of recent river interventions to improve their design, integrated and collaborative maintenance. The storylines are online and scrollable overviews of main scientific publications into about 1000 words that aid practitioners (i.e. river managers, advisors and other water professionals) to understand the context and contributions of the methods, models and tools that are being developed. Drawing on the narrative theory to structure the storyline elements, we followed a user-centered and collaborative design approach. We combined texts with appealing and interactive visuals using the Storymaps tool of ArcGIS to create the first storyline examples. We analyzed feedback of about 40 practitioners that was collected during workshops to evaluate their engagement with and understanding of the storylines. Here we presented the main conclusions of our experience that we applied in creating new storylines. We better considered the narrative engagement and design elements and are currently exploring with the aid of interested RiverCare researchers open access libraries to create the storylines and the interactive visualizations of their publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of population and the expansion of urbanized areas can create problems of interference with large slope instabilities. Usually, the risk related to the activation of large landslides can be managed to reduce the activity of the landslide through remedial works. If it is not possible, through complex monitoring network coupled with an early warning system and with a civil protection procedure. The use of monitoring network implies the use of technological systems that can acquire data and check if the recent evolution creates the condition for the activation of thresholds. Many studies and application have been developed to solve this technical challenge, but the exploitation and communication of monitoring results constitute an underestimated issue.Monitoring data are often presented using not user-friendly representations that hamper the comprehension of results, in particular for non-expert users in landslide monitoring. This limit can be very critical, in particular during possible emergency related to the acceleration of the landslide that can prelude to a collapse of the unstable area. At this moment, monitoring data are one of the most important sources of information for decision makers who should be able to understand the obtained results.Starting from the experience of the Mont La Saxe rockslide emergency management, we developed a strategy aimed to collect, organize and disseminate monitoring data. This strategy is based on the use of informatics tools able to manage: acquisition, processing, early warning, and infographic production in a near real-time website publication of the flux of information acquired by the monitoring network. Furthermore, we adopted also an integrated use of different bulletins for the dissemination of commented data and the organization of all the available information on the landslide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]