Editorial for the special issue: extreme events and vulnerability in environment and society

Extreme events in nature and society are getting more and more important in our society. Hereby, it is not only important to address the ‘‘extremes’’ in terms of very large magnitude or intensity of a given natural process such as flood, heat wave, earthquake or landslide—it is also most important to consider the ‘‘extremes’’ in terms of societal impacts and societal consequences of natural hazards and creeping changes—including the degree of societal preparedness and response capacity to those impacts. Thus, it is indeed a major challenge to address the extremes in their completeness—and to summarize the different perspectives and approaches, but also to determine the major challenges when dealing with extreme events and its different facets. This general topic has been addressed by three major events in 2007: a session within the biannual German Geographers Conferences, the meeting of the German Working Group of Natural Hazards and Risks and the international Expert Working Group on Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards. The Geography Conference organized under the umbrella of the German Association of Geography (DGfG) was carried out in Bayreuth, Germany with the arching conference topic ‘‘Handling Risks—disasters, destabilization, security’’. In this conference, Carsten Felgentreff and Thomas Glade were invited to organize a session on ‘‘Natural disasters and disaster prevention’’. Numerous invited experts in the field of natural disasters from natural and social science perspectives presented their view and experience on this topic. The session aimed to link vulnerability assessments with disaster prevention, thus to link social perception, communication and decision processes to hazard and disaster research based on natural science approaches. Hereby, it was envisaged to demonstrate the potential for disaster prevention. Specific addressed questions included: How can the change of