Call for papers: Towards a digital ecosystem of virtual testbeds to support Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation in complex multi-risk frameworks
About
Submission deadline: 31 July 2025
Within an Italian Extended Partnership, i.e., the project RETURN - multi-Risk sciEnce for resilienT commUnities undeR a changiNg climate - funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, a digital ecosystem of virtual testbeds is being built. Its objective is to describe and simulate complex multi-risk processes in virtual environments deemed plausibly representative of realistic contexts in Italy (including geological and geomorphological ones) in order to improve understanding of cascading impacts and the interplay with risk mitigation and adaptation strategies through "what-if" scenarios. These testbeds are also used to communicate risk-assessment results to the broad stakeholder's community dealing with Disaster Risk Management and urban or territorial planning, as an effective support for decisions under uncertain conditions, towards more resilient and sustainable communities. Several case-studies are developed for testing of relevant risk and resilience assessment tools with reference to specific multi-hazard conditions in diverse natural-to-urban contexts and are used as building blocks for a comprehensive digital ecosystem of virtual testbeds. This special issue collects contributions from the research community of the RETURN project towards the conceptualization and implementation of the virtual testbeds which represents the apical product of the national project. Invited papers dealing with development and use of virtual testbeds to support Disaster Risk Management and planning are also included.
Guest editors
Maria Polese, PhD University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Massimiliano Pittore, PhD Eurac Research, Italy
Salvatore Martino, PhD University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy
Daniela Molinari, PhD Plitecnico di Milano, Italy
Manuscript submission information
Please refer to the https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/international-journal-of-disaster-risk-reduction/publish/guide-for-authors to prepare your manuscript. Once the manuscript is ready, please submit it through https://www.editorialmanager.com/ijdrr/default.aspx, click "Submit New Manuscript" and select the article type "VSI: Virtual Testbeds for DRM and CCA" from the dropdown list. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Executive Guest Editor Maria Polese via [email protected].