Extreme Weather and Climate (W&C) events are the cause of a number of hazards affecting our society through their impacts on the outdoor exposed activities and assets, and when interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems they can lead to disasters.
According to the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR, UNISDR 2015), economic losses from disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, storm surges, wind storms, cyclones and tsunamis are now reaching an average of US$250 billion to US$300 billion each year, and two thirds of them are due to extreme weather hazards such as flood, storm surges, and windstorms.
On the other hand, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, chapter 3), some types of extreme events have increased in frequency or magnitude (specially flash floods and related debris flows and landslides, storm surges, droughts, wildfires and heatwaves), and, in parallel, populations and assets at risk have also increased (Quevauviller et al., 2012).
