Compound and Cascading Hazards: Typology, Impacts, and Attribution

Abstract

A combination of climate events may cause significant impacts on the ecosystem and society, although individual events involved may not be severe extremes themselves – a notion known as compound event (e.g., drought and heatwaves, rain over burned areas, combined ocean and terrestrial flooding). Compound events do not conform to traditional categories of extremes and current environmental risk assessment methodologies, because they emerge from complex multi-causal and interdependent processes. After a short introduction, we present methods for evaluating the impacts of compound hazards on infrastructure systems (i.e., quantifying the probabilities of failure of power network components under current and future hazards). The results show that ignoring the interactions between interrelated hazard drivers significantly underestimate the risk of compound events. The presentation includes different methodological frameworks and perspectives for detecting, modeling, risk assessment and attribution of compound events. Improved understanding of compound and cascading hazards can lead to development of new paradigms, environmental risk assessment methods and decision support systems. 

Bio

Amir AghaKouchak is a Chancellor’s Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. He also serves as Director of UC Irvine’s Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS), where his team develops innovative tools for monitoring and modeling hydrologic extremes. In addition, he is the Lead for Water, Climate, and Infrastructure Risk at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), contributing to global efforts on sustainable water management and climate resilience. His research focuses on natural hazards and climate extremes, bridging the disciplines of hydrology, climatology, and remote sensing. A central theme of his work is the study of interactions among climatic and non-climatic hazards, particularly compound and cascading events. Dr. AghaKouchak has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and has received numerous honors, including the AGU James B. Macelwane Medal, AGU Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ASCE EWRI Fellow, ASCE Norman Medal, Robert E. Horton Lecturer in Hydrology, EGU Plinius Medal, and ASCE Huber Research Prize.