The rise in the global population, the effects of climate change, and the growing urbanization in regions prone to natural hazards are some of the factors contributing to the exponential increase in the economic and human losses due to natural hazards. In response to this global challenge, several international agendas such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement specifically demand a better understanding of disaster risk and impose specific risk reduction targets for the upcoming decades. Yet understanding, quantifying, and monitoring risk remain a challenge, particularly in areas where traditional risk data are limited. In the last decade, scientists, risk modellers, and data analysts have explored cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and data sources with unprecedented detail and spatial resolution to improve the reliability, accuracy, and geographical coverage of disaster risk assessment studies. The huge rise in popularity of these methods also comes with potential risks. This special issue fills an urgent need to properly understand the potential for AI and machine learning in the field of disaster risk analysis, communicate potential pitfalls and limitations, and provide examples of best practice. This special issue presents some of the recent advances and applications of machine learning in natural hazards risk assessment, covering the following topics:

• exposure data collection and automatic building classification;
• risk mapping and damage assessment;
• development of hazard intensity and vulnerability models;
• monitoring population and urban growth;
• post-disaster damage and loss detection;
• modelling of socio-economic vulnerability;
• when to use AI or machine learning vs. when to use conventional disaster risk analysis models;
• data, models, uncertainty, and performance metrics;
• ethical considerations in the use of AI for disaster risk modelling.

Flood is the foremost natural hazard around the world that affects human life and property (directly and indirectly). In the current era, many hydrologic and hydraulic modelling techniques are available for flood risk assessment and management, as well as for flood risk prevention and preparedness. Such techniques provide a platform for the scientific community to explore the causes of floods and to build up efficient methods for flood mitigation. This special issue invites in-depth and applied research work carried out through flood modelling including hydrological modelling, flood hydrodynamic modelling, flood inundation mapping, flood hazard mapping, risk assessment, flood policy, and flood mitigation strategy. It also welcomes studies dealing with various uncertainties associated with different stages of modelling and exploring modern techniques for model calibration and validation. In addition, real-time flood inundation mapping is an important aspect for evacuating people from low-lying areas and reducing death tolls. Real-time data information through UAV-based flood inundation mapping and analysis of associated uncertainty in real-time aerial surveying are welcome in this special issue.

The special issue will collect contributions from the scientific abstracts submitted to vEGU 2021 in the NH4.1 session "Earthquake-induced hazards: ground motion amplification and ground failures". Nevertheless, it is open to other submissions that are consistent with the topic of the EGU session. Generally, the main concern of the occurrence of an earthquake is ground shaking, although past events worldwide demonstrated that damage and death toll depend on both the strong ground motion and the ground effects. The variability of earthquake ground motion is caused by local geological conditions beneath a given site, due to the stratigraphic or topographic setting, that can give rise to amplification and resonances. Earthquake-induced ground effects are mainly landslides, soil liquefaction, surface faulting, and ground subsidence. They can affect an area with damage related to the full collapse or loss in functionality of facilities, roads, pipelines, and other lifelines.

One of the main interesting points of the special issue is that the topic of earthquake-induced hazards is observed with a multidisciplinary point of view, including different processes that are frequently analysed independently, although they are all tightly linked together. Moreover, the special issue will offer the opportunity to join scientific communities that rarely share their knowledge and results.

Specific topics of the special issue are

• subsoil investigation and characterization for seismic microzonation mapping,
• evaluation of seismic site response (1D, 2D, 3D),
• case histories of earthquake-triggered landslides analysed at either the local or regional scale,
• slope stability analyses and runout modelling of seismically/volcanically induced landslides, and
• studies on soil liquefaction and earthquake-induced subsidence.

We invite contributions to a special issue in NHESS on the European seismic hazard and risk models. During the 20th century, earthquakes in Europe accounted for more than 200 000 deaths and over EUR 250 billion in losses. Earthquakes cannot be prevented or precisely predicted, but efficient mitigation measures informed by earthquake hazard and risk models can significantly reduce their impacts.

It has long been recognized that earthquake effects extend across country borders and that seismic hazard and risk must be addressed not only locally but also nationally and, equally importantly, at a regional level.

In 2022, the European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk (EFEHR) released the next-generation European seismic hazard model and the first harmonized European earthquake risk models. The development of these models was a joint multiyear effort of seismologists, geologists, and engineers across Europe. These models offer harmonized information on the spatial distribution of expected levels of ground shaking due to earthquakes, their frequency, and their potential impact on the built environment and on people's well-being.

The newly released update of the earthquake hazard model and the first earthquake risk model for Europe are the basis for establishing mitigation measures and making communities more resilient. They significantly improve understanding of where strong shaking is most likely to occur and what effects future earthquakes in Europe will have.

We invite contributions to a virtual special issue in NHESS related to the European seismic hazard and risk model building, model results, sensitivity analysis, and all model components. We also welcome contributions on seismic hazard and risk assessment in general, at the local, national, and regional levels, with a particular emphasis on seismogenic source models, earthquake rate forecasts, active fault modelling, empirical and physical ground motion modelling, site effect evaluation, exposure modelling, numerical and empirical vulnerability model development, assessment of seismic hazard across political boundaries, comparison and sensitivity analyses, and other related topics. Contributions demonstrating the development of novel testing procedures, as well as the comprehensive treatment of aleatory and epistemic uncertainties, are also encouraged.

Submission to the virtual special issues will start in July 2022 and end in February 2023; contributions will be open for community reviews and published online as soon as the review process is completed.

Extreme hydro-meteorological events drive hazardous hydrologic and geomorphic responses, such as floods, landslides, and debris flows, which pose a significant threat to modern societies on a global scale. The continuous increase in population and urban settlements in hazard-prone areas in combination with evidence of changes in extreme weather events leads to a concerning increase in risks associated with weather-induced hazards. To improve resilience and to design more effective mitigation strategies, we need to better understand the aspects of vulnerability, risk, mitigation, and triggers that are associated with these hazards.

This special issue aims at gathering contributions on the most recent research advances on vulnerability analysis, risk estimation, impact assessment, mitigation policies, and communication strategies related to hydro-meteorological extremes.

In the past decades, the risk to society due to natural hazards has increased around the globe. The Andes region is particularly exposed to natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides, volcanic activity, forest fires, and others. To mitigate these threats, effective risk management is indispensable, for which reliable and up-to-date information is essential. The complex relationships between multiple and consecutive natural hazards, the exposed population, a dynamic vulnerability, and critical infrastructures lead to cascading effects which are often not considered. Furthermore, the assessment, quantification, and propagation of intrinsic and epistemic uncertainty are mostly not considered. This can lead to inadequate or even misleading risk management strategies, thus hindering efficient prevention and mitigation measures, and ultimately undermining the resilience of societies.

The special issue aims at making a significant contribution to single-hazard and multi-hazard risk assessment, including exposure and dynamic vulnerability, and progressing towards the analysis of cascading effects. Specific topics of this special issue include, but are not limited to,

• new methods and techniques for (multi-)hazard scenarios, exposure, and vulnerability modelling;
• new methods and techniques for impact assessment, cascading effects, and loss estimation;
• design, development, and implementation of tools for the analysis of multi-risks;
• analysis and development towards practical applications for stakeholders and decision makers.

The special issue asks for contributions that address countries of the Andes region. Submissions for all manuscript types such as research articles, review articles, and brief communications are welcome.

Initiated by the German research project ClimXtreme (https://climxtreme.net/index.php), but open to all relevant submissions, the objective of the inter-journal special issue "Past and future European atmospheric extreme events under climate change" is to compile research results and recent advances in research exploring if and how extreme weather events have changed in the past, and what is to be expected under future climate scenarios. The time span covers the past and present centuries. Foci are physical mechanisms, statistical assessments, and impact-prone processes. Research on physical mechanisms addresses understanding the relationship between the extreme events' occurrence and severity and their spatial and temporal environment, exploring how climate change influences their generation processes in the past and a prospective future. Statistical approaches related to data science make use of large heterogeneous observational and model output data, of both the past and future, or advanced statistical methods, such as attribution research. Impact-related research investigates factors modifying the relation of the extreme meteorological conditions and the outcome in terms of damage, as pre-conditioning mechanisms can change the resilience of society and ecosystems against extremes. Compound meteorological events can lead to damage with a combination of relatively weak extremes. The regional focus is on continental Europe and its marginal seas, including the Atlantic and Arctic regions as important interacting parts of the climate system. Authors are advised to choose the most appropriate journal for their papers, which in this inter-journal special issue are Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS), Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography (ASCMO), and Weather and Climate Dynamics (WCD).

Fire is an essential feature of terrestrial ecosystems and plays an important role in the Earth system. Fires are regulated by climate, vegetation characteristics, and human activity and also feedback to them in multiple ways. For example, fires can shape vegetation composition and structure; adjust land carbon, nutrient, water, and energy cycles; change atmospheric composition, chemistry, and physics; and affect air quality and human health. Elevated fire activity in 2019 across the arctic, Amazon, and other regions underscores the urgency of a quantitative understanding of fire as an Earth system process that interacts with vegetation, climate, and humans. The EGU2020 B3.17 session on the role of fire in the Earth system received the most abstracts in the Biogeosciences division this year and was highly attended during the live chat. The abstracts cover several aspects of interactions between fire and the biosphere, atmosphere, and humans across various temporal and spatial scales using modelling, field and laboratory observations, and remote sensing. Given that the topic is highly interdisciplinary and overarching, we propose an inter-journal (ESD/BG/ACP/GMD/NHESS) special issue for this session with ESD as the lead journal, and we also encourage the submission of topic-related studies outside the EGU fire session. The special issue will bring together new advances in understanding the feedbacks and interactions between fire and other components of the Earth system at all temporal and spatial scales using various methods, including (1) impacts of fire on weather, climate, and atmospheric chemistry; (2) interactions between fire, the biogeochemical cycle, vegetation composition and structure, and land water and energy budgets; (3) influence of humans on fire and vice versa; (4) fire characteristics (e.g., fire duration, emission factor, emission height, smoke transport); (5) spatial and temporal changes of fires in the past, present, and future; (6) fire products and models, their validation, and error/bias assessment; and (7) analytical tools designed to enhance situational awareness among fire practitioners and early warning systems, addressing specific needs of operational fire behaviour modelling.

We invite contributions to a special issue in NHESS on the European seismic hazard and risk models. During the 20th century, earthquakes in Europe accounted for more than 200 000 deaths and over EUR 250 billion in losses. Earthquakes cannot be prevented or precisely predicted, but efficient mitigation measures informed by earthquake hazard and risk models can significantly reduce their impacts.

It has long been recognized that earthquake effects extend across country borders and that seismic hazard and risk must be addressed not only locally but also nationally and, equally importantly, at a regional level.

In 2022, the European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk (EFEHR) released the next-generation European seismic hazard model and the first harmonized European earthquake risk models. The development of these models was a joint multiyear effort of seismologists, geologists, and engineers across Europe. These models offer harmonized information on the spatial distribution of expected levels of ground shaking due to earthquakes, their frequency, and their potential impact on the built environment and on people's well-being.

The newly released update of the earthquake hazard model and the first earthquake risk model for Europe are the basis for establishing mitigation measures and making communities more resilient. They significantly improve understanding of where strong shaking is most likely to occur and what effects future earthquakes in Europe will have.

We invite contributions to a virtual special issue in NHESS related to the European seismic hazard and risk model building, model results, sensitivity analysis, and all model components. We also welcome contributions on seismic hazard and risk assessment in general, at the local, national, and regional levels, with a particular emphasis on seismogenic source models, earthquake rate forecasts, active fault modelling, empirical and physical ground motion modelling, site effect evaluation, exposure modelling, numerical and empirical vulnerability model development, assessment of seismic hazard across political boundaries, comparison and sensitivity analyses, and other related topics. Contributions demonstrating the development of novel testing procedures, as well as the comprehensive treatment of aleatory and epistemic uncertainties, are also encouraged.

Submission to the virtual special issues will start in July 2022 and end in February 2023; contributions will be open for community reviews and published online as soon as the review process is completed.

Flood is the foremost natural hazard around the world that affects human life and property (directly and indirectly). In the current era, many hydrologic and hydraulic modelling techniques are available for flood risk assessment and management, as well as for flood risk prevention and preparedness. Such techniques provide a platform for the scientific community to explore the causes of floods and to build up efficient methods for flood mitigation. This special issue invites in-depth and applied research work carried out through flood modelling including hydrological modelling, flood hydrodynamic modelling, flood inundation mapping, flood hazard mapping, risk assessment, flood policy, and flood mitigation strategy. It also welcomes studies dealing with various uncertainties associated with different stages of modelling and exploring modern techniques for model calibration and validation. In addition, real-time flood inundation mapping is an important aspect for evacuating people from low-lying areas and reducing death tolls. Real-time data information through UAV-based flood inundation mapping and analysis of associated uncertainty in real-time aerial surveying are welcome in this special issue.

Extreme hydro-meteorological events drive hazardous hydrologic and geomorphic responses, such as floods, landslides, and debris flows, which pose a significant threat to modern societies on a global scale. The continuous increase in population and urban settlements in hazard-prone areas in combination with evidence of changes in extreme weather events leads to a concerning increase in risks associated with weather-induced hazards. To improve resilience and to design more effective mitigation strategies, we need to better understand the aspects of vulnerability, risk, mitigation, and triggers that are associated with these hazards.

This special issue aims at gathering contributions on the most recent research advances on vulnerability analysis, risk estimation, impact assessment, mitigation policies, and communication strategies related to hydro-meteorological extremes.

Initiated by the German research project ClimXtreme (https://climxtreme.net/index.php), but open to all relevant submissions, the objective of the inter-journal special issue "Past and future European atmospheric extreme events under climate change" is to compile research results and recent advances in research exploring if and how extreme weather events have changed in the past, and what is to be expected under future climate scenarios. The time span covers the past and present centuries. Foci are physical mechanisms, statistical assessments, and impact-prone processes. Research on physical mechanisms addresses understanding the relationship between the extreme events' occurrence and severity and their spatial and temporal environment, exploring how climate change influences their generation processes in the past and a prospective future. Statistical approaches related to data science make use of large heterogeneous observational and model output data, of both the past and future, or advanced statistical methods, such as attribution research. Impact-related research investigates factors modifying the relation of the extreme meteorological conditions and the outcome in terms of damage, as pre-conditioning mechanisms can change the resilience of society and ecosystems against extremes. Compound meteorological events can lead to damage with a combination of relatively weak extremes. The regional focus is on continental Europe and its marginal seas, including the Atlantic and Arctic regions as important interacting parts of the climate system. Authors are advised to choose the most appropriate journal for their papers, which in this inter-journal special issue are Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS), Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography (ASCMO), and Weather and Climate Dynamics (WCD).

The rise in the global population, the effects of climate change, and the growing urbanization in regions prone to natural hazards are some of the factors contributing to the exponential increase in the economic and human losses due to natural hazards. In response to this global challenge, several international agendas such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement specifically demand a better understanding of disaster risk and impose specific risk reduction targets for the upcoming decades. Yet understanding, quantifying, and monitoring risk remain a challenge, particularly in areas where traditional risk data are limited. In the last decade, scientists, risk modellers, and data analysts have explored cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and data sources with unprecedented detail and spatial resolution to improve the reliability, accuracy, and geographical coverage of disaster risk assessment studies. The huge rise in popularity of these methods also comes with potential risks. This special issue fills an urgent need to properly understand the potential for AI and machine learning in the field of disaster risk analysis, communicate potential pitfalls and limitations, and provide examples of best practice. This special issue presents some of the recent advances and applications of machine learning in natural hazards risk assessment, covering the following topics:

• exposure data collection and automatic building classification;
• risk mapping and damage assessment;
• development of hazard intensity and vulnerability models;
• monitoring population and urban growth;
• post-disaster damage and loss detection;
• modelling of socio-economic vulnerability;
• when to use AI or machine learning vs. when to use conventional disaster risk analysis models;
• data, models, uncertainty, and performance metrics;
• ethical considerations in the use of AI for disaster risk modelling.

In the past decades, the risk to society due to natural hazards has increased around the globe. The Andes region is particularly exposed to natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides, volcanic activity, forest fires, and others. To mitigate these threats, effective risk management is indispensable, for which reliable and up-to-date information is essential. The complex relationships between multiple and consecutive natural hazards, the exposed population, a dynamic vulnerability, and critical infrastructures lead to cascading effects which are often not considered. Furthermore, the assessment, quantification, and propagation of intrinsic and epistemic uncertainty are mostly not considered. This can lead to inadequate or even misleading risk management strategies, thus hindering efficient prevention and mitigation measures, and ultimately undermining the resilience of societies.

The special issue aims at making a significant contribution to single-hazard and multi-hazard risk assessment, including exposure and dynamic vulnerability, and progressing towards the analysis of cascading effects. Specific topics of this special issue include, but are not limited to,

• new methods and techniques for (multi-)hazard scenarios, exposure, and vulnerability modelling;
• new methods and techniques for impact assessment, cascading effects, and loss estimation;
• design, development, and implementation of tools for the analysis of multi-risks;
• analysis and development towards practical applications for stakeholders and decision makers.

The special issue asks for contributions that address countries of the Andes region. Submissions for all manuscript types such as research articles, review articles, and brief communications are welcome.

The special issue will collect contributions from the scientific abstracts submitted to vEGU 2021 in the NH4.1 session "Earthquake-induced hazards: ground motion amplification and ground failures". Nevertheless, it is open to other submissions that are consistent with the topic of the EGU session. Generally, the main concern of the occurrence of an earthquake is ground shaking, although past events worldwide demonstrated that damage and death toll depend on both the strong ground motion and the ground effects. The variability of earthquake ground motion is caused by local geological conditions beneath a given site, due to the stratigraphic or topographic setting, that can give rise to amplification and resonances. Earthquake-induced ground effects are mainly landslides, soil liquefaction, surface faulting, and ground subsidence. They can affect an area with damage related to the full collapse or loss in functionality of facilities, roads, pipelines, and other lifelines.

One of the main interesting points of the special issue is that the topic of earthquake-induced hazards is observed with a multidisciplinary point of view, including different processes that are frequently analysed independently, although they are all tightly linked together. Moreover, the special issue will offer the opportunity to join scientific communities that rarely share their knowledge and results.

Specific topics of the special issue are

• subsoil investigation and characterization for seismic microzonation mapping,
• evaluation of seismic site response (1D, 2D, 3D),
• case histories of earthquake-triggered landslides analysed at either the local or regional scale,
• slope stability analyses and runout modelling of seismically/volcanically induced landslides, and
• studies on soil liquefaction and earthquake-induced subsidence.

Fire is an essential feature of terrestrial ecosystems and plays an important role in the Earth system. Fires are regulated by climate, vegetation characteristics, and human activity and also feedback to them in multiple ways. For example, fires can shape vegetation composition and structure; adjust land carbon, nutrient, water, and energy cycles; change atmospheric composition, chemistry, and physics; and affect air quality and human health. Elevated fire activity in 2019 across the arctic, Amazon, and other regions underscores the urgency of a quantitative understanding of fire as an Earth system process that interacts with vegetation, climate, and humans. The EGU2020 B3.17 session on the role of fire in the Earth system received the most abstracts in the Biogeosciences division this year and was highly attended during the live chat. The abstracts cover several aspects of interactions between fire and the biosphere, atmosphere, and humans across various temporal and spatial scales using modelling, field and laboratory observations, and remote sensing. Given that the topic is highly interdisciplinary and overarching, we propose an inter-journal (ESD/BG/ACP/GMD/NHESS) special issue for this session with ESD as the lead journal, and we also encourage the submission of topic-related studies outside the EGU fire session. The special issue will bring together new advances in understanding the feedbacks and interactions between fire and other components of the Earth system at all temporal and spatial scales using various methods, including (1) impacts of fire on weather, climate, and atmospheric chemistry; (2) interactions between fire, the biogeochemical cycle, vegetation composition and structure, and land water and energy budgets; (3) influence of humans on fire and vice versa; (4) fire characteristics (e.g., fire duration, emission factor, emission height, smoke transport); (5) spatial and temporal changes of fires in the past, present, and future; (6) fire products and models, their validation, and error/bias assessment; and (7) analytical tools designed to enhance situational awareness among fire practitioners and early warning systems, addressing specific needs of operational fire behaviour modelling.