Risk identification and assessment

Research in Osaka shows that groundwater recovery can reverse land subsidence, helping coastal cities adapt to sea-level rise. The study also reveals how underground fault lines influence groundwater flow and patterns of land uplift.

Summer droughts grab the headlines and public attention. When we have a dry period over the summer it’s everywhere, with brown lawns, hosepipe bans and cracked reservoir beds. But winter is when the UK refills its water stores.

This study models landslide susceptibility in eThekwini, South Africa, after the April 2022 floods, using Random Forest and SVM. Land use, elevation, NDVI, and lithology were key factors, with most housing located in low-susceptibility areas.

UFZ study combines climate and hydrological models to analyse flood peaks.

Between March and July 2026, news outlets reported 359 heat-related deaths in India, of which 86 were confirmed and 273 suspected, across 17 states and the Union Territory of Delhi.

A startling new model reveals that Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier could cause twice as much sea level rise as previously predicted, even without additional global warming.

Ocean currents are changing, with global climate implications, yet governments remain unprepared. Of 91 national adaptation plans submitted to the UN, only two mention the key Atlantic current, and neither outlines action for a possible collapse.

Climate hazards affect over half the world’s population, but vulnerability varies widely. In 2024, 1.5 billion people were both exposed to climate-related hazards and highly vulnerable to their impacts, limiting their ability to cope and recover.

This article reconstructs the 26 August 2026 Bhote Koshi-Trishuli cascade in Nepal, analyzes downstream propagation, & evaluates early warning system elements, proposing a two-stage framework for hazard detection & emergency response in mountain corridors

This study develops a machine-learning classification framework (MLCF) to attribute the cause of wildfire ignitions as either human- or lightning-induced on a global, event-level scale.

This study investigates the role of anthropogenic climate change in the record-breaking extreme rainfall of November 2025 that affected northern Sumatra (Indonesia), Peninsular Malaysia, and southern Thailand.

When the ground heats up, it expands and moves - putting strain on underground pipes which are already under pressure, causing them to buckle and split.

This report was carried out at the request of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) to inform the preparedness and anticipatory action frameworks to DG ECHO’s Regional Office in Bangkok.

There is increasing interest in the role of unusually warm conditions and glacial permafrost instability. Warming can increase meltwater penetration into the crevasses of glaciers and weaken ice-rock bonds.

Scientists have identified the conditions that make it possible to predict some El Niño and La Niña events up to a year in advance, potentially giving communities and decision-makers significantly more time to prepare for weather extremes.

Nepal–China flood exposes a missing dimension in the global AI debate. As world leaders focus on future threats, the more immediate challenge is to use AI to anticipate disasters, accelerate cross-border warnings and protect human life today.

Running a global glacier model at daily rather than monthly resolution across more than 12,500 glaciers reproduces observed mass loss better and projects a 5 to 10 per cent larger glacier contribution to 21st-century sea-level rise.

This study presents an image-based framework for rapid seismic assessment of unreinforced masonry façades using computer vision, photogrammetry, and semantic segmentation to automate 3D modeling and vulnerability analysis from multi-view RGB images.

This study presents seismic hazard maps for Finland, northern Europe, based on the earthquake catalog FENCAT updated until the end of 2021 and a 2025 three-level hierarchical zoning model.

This study used observed precipitation and QDM-corrected CMIP6 simulations to examine future meteorological drought in Brazil, across 82 hydrographic microregions under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5.

This Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) shows that ambitious climate action can protect people and livelihoods while unlocking new engines of inclusive growth.

The platform combines NASA fire observations with official reports where available. Users can follow locations through email alerts, explore background articles and contribute photographs or videos for review before publication.

As El Niño-driven drought and extreme weather threaten Pacific Island communities, Hawai‘i and Samoa partner on a disaster preparedness assessment to share knowledge and strengthen risk reduction, emergency readiness and resilience across the region.

California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment summarizes climate projections, hazards and vulnerabilities across the state, highlighting increasing risks and adaptation approaches for California’s natural, built and social systems.

This report examines the risks facing the coastal areas of Asia and the Pacific and details how building resilience can protect development and unlock new opportunities.

A crack appears beside a window after weeks of scorching weather. As much as you might hope the ground beneath your house will recover with the first rain, the effects of a dry summer can continue long after temperatures fall.

This study presents a systematic review of 2171 publications spanning 1964–2025, combining a global perspective with a regional focus on the Gulf of Guinea, a critically underrepresented region within the African continent.

This paper consolidates 58,319 outbreak event records for 32 diseases and systematically test how 16 hypothesized social and environmental drivers impact outbreak geographies, while accounting for detection and reporting biases.

This paper describes how to use the Integrated system for Natural Capital Accounts to measure and account for ecosystem vulnerability, which constitutes the first component of nature-related risk.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

2025 landslide-triggered mega-tsunami in Alaska shows growing risks as glaciers melt. Scientists propose a progressive alert system using weather, glacier changes and seismic activity to warn communities and vessels of potential landslides and tsunamis.

While Nepal has invested significantly in GLOF monitoring, the August flood has highlighted the need to broaden this effort through earth observation, wider hazard monitoring, risk communication and transboundary data-sharing to identify evolving risks

This Disaster Management Reference Handbook provides a comprehensive profile of Vanuatu’s national DM structure, policies, plans, and institutions, as well as background information on the country, its natural hazards.

This study applies an a priori scaffold of eight institutionalisation pathways and a cross-cutting coordination pathway to develop an institutionalisation-deficit framework.

This study aims to develop a risk-based model for assessing fire hazards in highway bridges, intended as a practical decision-support tool for infrastructure managers to identify critical scenarios and prioritise mitigation strategies.

This study identifies recurrent hotspot zones of projected heat and dry-spell persistence across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

New Zealand is set to see a future of more frequent and extreme droughts, heatwaves and fires, along with bigger floods.

A 20-year study found that global exposure to wildfires and heat waves occurring on the same days rose by 287 million from 2000 to 2019, with over half the world’s population experiencing these combined events.

This study investigates the development and evaluation of immersive geospatial learning materials for flood disaster education, integrating GIS, Augmented Reality (AR), spatial literacy, higher-order thinking skills, and ecopedagogical perspectives.

This article assesses how definitions affect detected changes in compound climate extremes in Europe, finding that event frequency, intensity, and trends are sensitive to metric choice and recommends careful selection of event definitions for monitoring.

This study applies a grid-based, explainable machine learning framework to Jeju Island and finds that rainfall, groundwater, and proximity to water bodies are key, regionally variable factors for flood occurrence, supporting nuanced flood risk management.

Alaska scientists have launched an interactive tsunami map covering 66 coastal communities, highlighting flood risks and preparedness gaps to help local leaders strengthen evacuation planning and protect lives.

As cities continue to sink, we need to examine these changes at the local scale. Averages across a whole city can tell us how big the problem is, but knowing where the land is sinking fastest – and who lives there – is essential to deciding for response.

New modelling suggests the tropical Pacific could stay in an El Niño-like state for centuries even after net zero is reached, with a larger share of El Niño events turning extreme. The longer emissions take to fall, the more of them.

This study presents a spatial network optimization approach to model extreme drought impacts on Sweden’s food supply chain, revealing that supply losses in the south translate to unmet demand in the north and highlighting new bottlenecks in distribution.

A study of doctors’ experiences during the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes highlights gaps in disaster preparedness and calls for practical training, psychological support and policies that recognize healthcare workers may also be disaster survivors.