IntroductionThe beginning of the XXIst century has been marked by a significant number of natural disasters, such as floods, severe storms, wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, and tsunamis. Extreme natural events cause devastation resulting in loss of human life, large environmental damage, and partial or total loss of infrastructure. The principal signature of such events is that their probability decreases rapidly with magnitude, but the damage caused increases rapidly, and so does the cost of protection against it. The recent catastrophic events (e.g. the Indian Ocean giant earthquake and devastating tsunami in 2004, earthquakes in Pakistan in 2005, China in 2008, Haiti in 2010, Katrina hurricane in USA in 2005) reminded us once again that there is a strong coupling between complex solid Earth, oceanic, and atmospheric processes. A holistic approach is required to understand the phenomena, to predict catastrophic events, and to mitigate natural disasters [1]. Obviously, humankind will never be able to prevent these occurrences of natural phenomena entirely. However, scientists are able to gain better understanding of the complex mechanisms of extreme natural events that cause the disasters and deliver their knowledge to disaster management agencies in order to be prepared to cope with such extreme events. Scientists need also a deeper understanding, based on work across disciplines, of all of the processes that are involved. They must be mindful of public concerns and the risk perceptions that underlie them. Communication between the groups of experts of various international organizations dealing with natural hazards and their activity in disaster risk reduction needs to be strengthened. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction (18-22 January 2005, Kobe, Japan) called for the establishment of a clear framework for action to reduce risk and to build resilient communities [2]. In addressing extreme natural events, ENHANS will have important implications for current natural hazard attitudes and polices. In particular, it relates directly to key matters such as hazard mitigation and disaster risk reduction and is at the very core of the idea of sustainability. The following fundamental question [3] underpins ENHANS: What technologies and methodologies are required to assess the vulnerability of people and places to hazards - and how might these be used at a variety of spatial scales? To answer the question ENHANS seeks to integrate closely with the existing and future planned work of the ICSU Unions as well as another relevant international unions and organizations. This project builds on and extends the foundation provided by the highly successful scientific meetings: 2002 Budapest [4], 2004 Stockholm [5], 2005 Baku [6], 2004 Hyderabad and 2006 Munich [7] workshops and the 2008 IYPE Symposium in Oslo [8], all on risk science, society and sustainability. These scientific meetings brought together experts from geosciences and mathematics with experts in social science, science policy and law specifically to deal with problems of natural hazard, risk and sustainability and to discuss a range of topics as diverse as environmental and water risk management and sustainability; earthquake, landslide, and tsunami risks; natural and technological risk modeling; problems of megacities and megarisks; relationship between problems of risk, sustainable development, and society; and social and legal aspects of risk and sustainability.
[1] ICSU Statement on Science and Natural Hazards, 2005 (http://www.icsu.org/Gestion/img/ICSU_DOC_DOWNLOAD/557_DD_FILE_Natural_Hazards.pdf); |
