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Wildfires, drought, insect outbreaks, and windstorms are altering the forest‐associated ecosystem services that are essential for human well‐being, and the impacts of such events are likely to increase under ongoing climate change. However, a widely accepted and operational framework for evaluating forest vulnerability and risk to these disturbances remains lacking. We propose a general framework to assess forest vulnerability and risk based on the widely used concepts of exposure, hazard magnitude, susceptibility, and lack of adaptive capacity as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We suggest a standardized procedure for defining and combining these components, as well as a list of indicators readily applicable to the primary hazards to forests associated with climate change. This framework and its methodology constitute a basis for a systematic assessment of forest risk and vulnerability for policy makers, as well as for forest and land managers, that can aid in the development of forward‐looking policies.

Adaptation strategies to climate change need information about present and future climatic conditions. However, next to scenarios about the future climate, scenarios about future vulnerability are essential, since also changing societal conditions fundamentally determine adaptation needs. At the international and national level, first initiatives for developing vulnerability scenarios and so-called shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) have been undertaken. Most of these scenarios, however, do not provide sufficient information for local scenarios and local climate risk management. There is an urgent need to develop scenarios for vulnerability at the local scale in order to complement climate change scenarios. Heat stress is seen as a key challenge in cities in the context of climate change and further urban growth. Based on the research project ZURES (ZURES 2020 website), the paper presents a new method for human vulnerability scenarios to heat stress at the very local scale for growing medium-sized cities. In contrast to global models that outline future scenarios mostly with a country-level resolution, we show a new method on how to develop spatially specific scenario information for different districts within cities, starting from the planned urban development and expansion. The method provides a new opportunity to explore how different urban development strategies and housing policies influence future human exposure and vulnerability. Opportunities and constraints of the approach are revealed. Finally, we discuss how these scenarios can inform future urban development and risk management strategies and how these could complement more global or national approaches.

Spatial planning has an important role to play in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Particularly in growing urban regions, cities are expanding into hazard-prone areas and lack of planning is leading to increased vulnerability of people and structures and is exacerbating hazards. Gathering and understanding information about the determinants of climate risk—hazard, exposure, and vulnerability—and how physical climate and environmental changes interact with the human socioeconomic system, is an important basis for spatial planning that reduces risk. Using the case study of the Andaman Coast of Thailand, this paper provides an example of the determinants of climate risk and how they are relevant to spatial planning. The paper highlights the importance of considering not just climate-related hazards but also how human settlements are exposed and vulnerable to these hazards.

The concepts of vulnerability, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are interlinked. Risk reduction requires a focus not just on the hazards themselves or on the people and structures exposed to hazards but on the vulnerability of those exposed. Vulnerability helps with the identification of root causes that make people or structures susceptible to being affected by natural and climate-related hazards. It is therefore an essential component of reducing risk of disasters and of adapting to climate change. The need to better assess and acknowledge vulnerability has been recognized by several communities of thought and practice, including the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) communities. The concept of vulnerability was introduced during the 1980s as a way to better understand the differential consequences of similar hazard events and differential impacts of climate change on different societies or social groups and physical structures. Since then, the concept gradually became an integral part of discourses around disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Although the history of the emergence of vulnerability concepts and the different perspectives of these communities mean the way they frame vulnerability differs, the academic discourse has reached wide agreement that risk—and actual harm and losses—are not just caused by physical events apparently out of human control but primarily by what is exposed and vulnerable to those events. In the international policy arena, vulnerability, risk, and adaptation concepts are now integrated into the global agenda on sustainable development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change. In the context of international development projects and financial aid, the terms and concepts are increasingly used and applied. However, there is still too little focus on addressing underlying vulnerabilities.

In 2016, heavy precipitation events in Southern Germany demonstrated that pluvial flooding can cause serious damages, not just in large cities but also in small and medium-sized cities. Hazard-oriented disaster management approaches to better address such spatially ubiquitous extreme events are already being developed. However, integrated strategies to reduce risk and to promote climate-resilient development pathways through both private precautionary measures and integrated urban planning are still underdeveloped. Considering the uncertainties associated with heavy precipitation, analyzing and understanding damages, strengthening people’s preparedness and improving preventative measures are central components of resilience building. This paper complements existing empirical studies on households’ preparedness and provides further insight into how resilience to flooding from heavy precipitation in cities can be strengthened. We do this by analyzing the damages caused by one particular heavy precipitation event, the preparedness of people in the affected city and their perceptions of responsibilities for improving precautionary measures. This paper presents the results from a household survey with a total of 1,128 completed questionnaires which was carried out in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. The findings of the household survey illustrate the variety of damages caused by the heavy precipitation event and reveal important differences between households who experienced damages from pluvial flooding and those who did not. Lastly, findings of people’s perception about who is responsible for improved precautions offer interesting insights into tools that might help to enhance resilience building. Finally, the paper formulates recommendations for an improved assessment of resilience-building processes, individual capacities and planning tools to build climate resilience to extreme precipitation events.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Please check back later for the full article. Spatial and urban planning are acknowledged as important tools and processes that influence exposure to natural and technical hazards and risk accumulation, as well as risk and vulnerability reduction. Even though natural hazards (such as floods) and technical hazards have been discussed in spatial and urban planning for quite some time in various countries and regions, only in a very few cities and regions has there been a sufficient and systematic approach to establish risk management as part of the planning task within the field of spatial planning and urban land-use planning. Risk management strategies in spatial and urban planning have often been strengthened after major crises, such as severe fires in the middle ages in cities in Europe, or after major floods or hurricanes in North America, Asia, and Latin America, as well as Europe and Africa. In this context, risk management is understood as a cluster of concrete and practical strategies and actions on how to handle risks, and in terms of spatial and urban planning, including those risks that are of spatial importance or significant with regard to planning processes.

The development of appropriate risk and vulnerability reduction strategies to cope with tsunami risks is a major challenge for countries, regions, and cities exposed to potential tsunamis. European coastal cities such as Cadiz are exposed to tsunami risks. However, most official risk reduction strategies as well as the local population are not aware of the probability of such a phenomenon and the potential threat that tsunami waves could pose to their littoral. This paper outlines how tsunami risks, and particularly tsunami vulnerability, could be assessed and measured. To achieve this, a vulnerability assessment framework was applied focusing on the city of Cadiz as a case study in order to highlight the practical use and the challenges and gaps such an assessment has to deal with. The findings yield important information that could assist with the systematic improvement of societal response capacities of cities and their inhabitants to potential tsunami risks. Hazard and vulnerability maps were developed, and qualitative data was obtained through, for example, focused group discussions. These maps and surveys are essential for the development of a people-centred early warning and response system. Therefore, in this regard, the Tsunami Early Warning and Mitigation System in the North Eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and connected seas promoted by the UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) should encompass these assessments to ensure that action is particularly intensified and fostered by those potentially exposed. That means that besides the necessary technical infrastructure for tsunami detection, additional response and adaptation measures need to be promoted – particularly those that reduce the vulnerability of people and regions exposed – in terms of national systems. In addition, it is important to develop emergency preparedness and awareness plans in order to create an integrated regional Tsunami EarlyWarning System (TEWS) by 2011. The findings of the paper are based on research conducted within the framework of the EC funded project TRANSFER: “Tsunami Risk ANd Strategies For the European Region”, a project that aims to improve the understanding of tsunami processes in the Euro- Mediterranean region, to develop methods and tools to assess vulnerability and risk, and to identify strategies for the reduction of tsunami risks. This study was funded by TRANSFER Project, contract STREP 37058 UE. Information regarding tsunami sources was made available by NEAREST Project, contract STREP 037110. The authors wish to thank the support of Stefano Tinti and Nevio Zittelini, principal investigators of the above projects and to our colleagues Pedro Terrinha, Luis Matias and Marc-Andre Gutscher, with which we had many fruitful discussions.

The IPCC special report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (see IPCC, A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2012a, p. 582) underscores the importance of linking disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. However, in reality, practical approaches in adaptation and risk reduction have primarily been developed in isolation, rather than as a part of a parallel and intertwined process. This chapter examines the options and concepts that allow for the strengthening of the link between Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). In addition, barriers and mismatches between the two communities will be addressed. The chapter also discusses how limited cooperation between different institutions and ministries has hampered effective synergies between CCA and DRR in praxis. Finally, the chapter outlines recommendations and measures that need to be adopted in order to overcome existing barriers. In this regard criteria are formulated that should be applied in order to constantly monitor and evaluate adaptation strategies designed to simultaneously meet disaster risk reduction requirements.

Reducing risk that emerges from hazards of natural origin and societal vulnerability is a key challenge for the development of more resilient communities and the overall goal of sustainable development. The following chapter outlines a framework for multidimensional, holistic vulnerability assessment that is understood as part of risk evaluation and risk management in the context of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). As a heuristic, the framework is a thinking tool to guide systematic assessments of vulnerability and to provide a basis for comparative indicators and criteria development to assess key factors and various dimensions of vulnerability, particularly in regions in Europe, however, it can also be applied in other world regions. The framework has been developed within the context of the research project MOVE (Methods for the Improvement of Vulnerability Assessment in Europe; ) sponsored by the European Commission within the framework of the FP 7 program.

Coastal urban regions in low-lying areas in developing countries are often hotspots of climate change related risks and therefore the analysis of different characteristics of vulnerability, resilience and transformation is an important prerequisite for planning and decision making. Even though the concepts of resilience and transformation have been discussed for some time, they often remain still very abstract. Against this background the following paper aims to illustrate how different characteristics of vulnerability: susceptibility, exposure and adaptation from resilience to transformative change can be assessed in practice at the level of individual households and different city districts. The household survey was conducted in four low-income, at risk areas in the coastal megacity of Lagos. It reveals important differences between the case study locations in terms of perceived capacities and actual responses of households to extreme events and creeping hazards. The analysis of behavioral changes undertaken after extreme events underscores that experience of loss and damage is an important stimulus for people to change their behavior. Moreover perception of actual and future risk management capacities and the performance of government institutions influences risk management regimes at the household level. It was found that at risk populations experienced both, inaction from government and individual households. This is a corrective to the majority literature that focuses on proactive local or government action. In fact, these examples of success may be quite rare and were not found in the four settlements studied in this research. The survey is part of a larger international project regarding the Transformation and Resilience of Urban Coasts (TRUC (2016). Transformation fo urban coasts Available at www.bel_truc.org ) funded by the Belmont Forum and the DFG in particular in terms of the research in Lagos.

Many climate change adaptation efforts aim to address the implications of potential changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of weather and climate events that affect the risk of extreme impacts on human society. That risk is determined not only by the climate and weather events (the hazards) but also by the exposure and vulnerability to these hazards. Therefore, effective adaptation and disaster risk management strategies and practices also depend on a rigorous understanding of the dimensions of exposure and vulnerability, as well as a proper assessment of changes in those dimensions. This chapter aims to provide that understanding and assessment, by further detailing the determinants of risk as presented in Chapter 1. The first sections of this chapter elucidate the concepts that are needed to define and understand risk, and show that risk originates from a combination of social processes and their interaction with the environment (Sections 2.2 and 2.3), and highlight the role of coping and adaptive capacities (Section 2.4). The following section (2.5) describes the different dimensions of vulnerability and exposure as well as trends therein. Given that exposure and vulnerability are highly context-specific, this section is by definition limited to a general overview (a more quantitative perspective on trends is provided in Chapter 4). A methodological discussion (Section 2.6) of approaches to identify and assess risk provides indications of how the dimensions of exposure and vulnerability can be explored in specific contexts, such as adaptation planning, and the central role of risk perception and risk communication. The chapter concludes with a cross-cutting discussion of risk accumulation and the nature of disasters.

This chapter deals with the conceptualization, identification and assessment of the vulnerability of different social groups to water related hazards in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta is globally seen as one of the key hotspots of climate change related risks due to its exposure to floods, salinization and potential sea level rise. In order to underline the multifaceted nature of vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change the paper outlines vulnerability profiles of different households and socio-economic groups in selected hazard prone areas, notably in rural communities exposed to high floods, coastal communities exposed to saline intrusion and urban communities exposed to urban and tidal flooding. The different locations selected for the assessment of vulnerability allow comparing how different local context situations and hazard phenomena might influence specific coping and adaptation strategies. The socio-economic transformation processes and policy reforms that have affected all three locations are examined in terms of their influence on vulnerability and capacities. The chapter provides a contribution to a further enhancement of methods, data bases and quality criteria for moving from an impact oriented risk assessment to a forward-looking vulnerability assessment that can inform future adaptation strategies. In this regard the chapter makes a contribution for linking disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) discourses. Particularly, the analysis of vulnerabilities to creeping-changes has often not been sufficiently addresses and incorporated in DRR strategies in Vietnam.

The “Last-Mile Evacuation” research project develops a numerical last mile tsunami early warning and evacuation information system on the basis of detailed earth observation data and techniques as well as unsteady, hydraulic numerical modeling of small-scale flooding and inundation dynamics of the tsunami including evacuation simulations in the urban coastal hinterland for the city of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. It is well documented that Sumatra’s third largest city with almost one million inhabitants is located directly on the coast and partially sited beneath the sea level, and thus, is located in a zone of extreme risk due to severe earthquakes and potential triggered tsunamis. “Last-Mile” takes the inundation dynamics into account and additionally assesses the physical-technical susceptibility and the socio-economic vulnerability of the population with the objective to mitigate human and material losses due to possible tsunamis. By means of discrete multi-agent techniques risk-based, time- and site-dependent forecasts of the evacuation behavior of the population and the flow of traffic in large parts of the road system in the urban coastal strip are simulated and concurrently linked with the other components.

Against the background of massive urban development, area-wide and up-to-date spatial information is in demand. However, for many reasons this detailed information on the entire urban area is often not available or just not valid anymore. In the event of a natural hazard - e.g. a river flood - it is a crucial piece of information for relief units to have knowledge about the quantity and the distribution of the affected population. In this paper we demonstrate the abilities of remotely sensed data towards vulnerability assessment or disaster management in case of such an event. By means of very high resolution optical satellite imagery and surface information derived by airborne laser scanning, we generate a precise, three-dimensional representation of the landcover and the urban morphology. An automatic, object-oriented approach detects single buildings and derives morphological information - e.g. building size, height and shape - for a further classification of each building into various building types. Subsequently, a top-down approach is applied to distribute the total population of the city or the district on each individual building. In combination with information of potentially affected areas, the methodology is applied on two German cities to estimate potentially affected population with a high level of accuracy.