Systemic Multi-sectoral and Multi-hazard Risk Assessment in Current and Future Scenarios. The PARATUS-Project

Systemic multi-sectoral and multi-hazard risk assessment is an important issue for stakeholders to mitigate the impacts of cascading and compounding events. The EU Horizon Europe “PARATUS”—project deals in one of its work packages with this topic and aims to define a generic methodology for systemic risk assessment. The developed methodology will be applied and tested in four study sites: (i) Alps (Austria-Italy) focusing on extreme wind, floods, landslides, heat, droughts, snow avalanches and anthropogenic hazards, (ii) the Bucharest region and hazard chains associated with large earthquakes, (iii) Caribbean Islands considering tropical storms, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and earthquake, and (iv) Istanbul, which is affected by earth-quakes-related hazards (e.g. soil liquefaction, landslides or tsunamis) and by hydrometeorological hazards (extreme temperatures, fires, and flooding). The multi-hazard assessment is performed in the four sites in current conditions and for future scenarios that incorporate climate changes as well as changes of exposure and vulnerability. On one side, the multi-hazard aspect is studied by including the occurrence of simultaneous or closely timed events (compounding), as well as the cascading hazards that may arise from their interactions. On the other side, the physical, social, environmental and systemic vulnerability is analyzed and a capacity assessment performed. Special attention is given to the uncertainty analysis of each component in the generic methodology and the future predictions to ensure the robustness and reliability of the assessment.