The forces of the natural world can cause significant risk to life, property and economies. The power of extreme weather events on local topography or water movement can alter the status quo in sudden dramatic actions. Natural risk includes flooding and mudflow, coastal realignment, landslides, avalanches, droughts and fires.

Industrialization has created new stresses on the capacity of natural systems to recycle and regenerate, leading to a different set of environmental risk. This can be pollution of air, water and soils.

One aspect of the research area is understanding resilience.

Societal impact and strategic research objectives

The direct impacts of natural hazards/environmental risk on society and economies are immense. Floods, droughts and earthquakes cause major loss of life and health worldwide.
In addition, there are huge economic costs in terms of destroyed infrastructures, opportunity costs, and immediate and long-term relief. The goal of the research is to understand and assess causes, risks and effects, and then to examine management and mitigation strategies. Moreover, as climate change and land use change occurs, it will be important to determine consequential effects as regards natural hazards.

Political and administrative frame

The development of harmonized EU-wide methodologies and information systems for the prevention and prediction of weather-driven natural hazards is important. This is designed to complement national initiatives.

Read more on natural hazards on JRC home page:

• Natural hazards (http://natural-hazards.jrc.ec.europa.eu/)
  
  

Main sub-fields and areas

• Floods
• Mudflows
• Droughts
• Mass movements
• Avalanches
• Forest fires
• Earthquakes and tsunamis
• Volcanoes
• Air pollution
• Water pollution

Approach

Natural hazards research considers a robust and comprehensive framework that supports individual hazards and multi-hazards research and the integration of the risk-reduction chain. This includes: research on individual hazards (understanding, modeling, forecasting…), on exposure and vulnerability assessment and on a thorough risk-analysis assessment. Particular attention is also given to the multi-risk dimension. This approach is necessary for risk management as well as for developing prevention and mitigation strategies.

Projects

A list of relevant EU funded projects (FP6 and FP7) involving PEER partners:

• ALARM: Assessing large-scale environmental risks with tested methods.
  (PEER partners involved: CEH, NERI, SYKE, UFZ)
• DAISIE: Delivering Alien Species Inventories for Europe.
  (PEER partners involved: CEH, UFZ)
• ERAPHARM: Environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals.
  (PEER partners involved: Cemagref, NERI)
• FLOODSITE: (Integrated Flood Risk Analysis and Management of Methodologies
  (PEER partners involved: Cemagref, JRC - IES, UFZ)
• NoMiracle: Novel Methods for Integrated Risk Assessment of Cumulative Stressors in Europe
  (PEER partners involved: Alterra, CEH, JRC - IES, NERI, SYKE, UFZ)
• NORMAN: Network of reference laboratories and related organisations for monitoring and bio-monitoring of emerging environmental pollutants (PEER partners involved: Alterra, Cemagref, NERI, SYKE)
• Nitro Europe: The nitrogen cycle and its influence on the European greenhouse gas balance
  (PEER partners involved: Alterra, CEH, JRC - IES, SYKE)