Compound Events and Multi-Hazard Analytics
EGU26 Short Course SC2.1
May 06, 2026
08:30 – 10:15 (CEST)
Room -2.82, Austria Center Vienna
All materials: https://compound-events-multihazard-shortcourse.github.io/
EGU session description: https://www.egu26.eu/session/56950
Description
Compounding hazards can lead to interconnected or aggravated impacts. In recent years, the analysis of compound events has become essential to understand and to improve our response to such high-impact multi-hazard disasters.
Compound events involve two events happening either simultaneously or sequentially. These events can be independent of each other (in which the outcome of one event has no effect on the probability of the other), or they can be dependent (in which the outcome of one event affects the probability of another). In the context of weather, climate or hydrology, compound events refer to combinations of multiple drivers or hazards which can lead to large impacts and disasters. These compound weather, climate or hydrological events can be related to extreme conditions themselves (e.g. storms, heatwaves, floods and droughts), or to combinations of events that are themselves not extremes but lead to an extreme event or significant impact when combined. This EGU short course offers conceptual background and hands-on experience with state-of-the-art methods to study compound events. The session start with two introductory talks: we will give an overview of the typology of compound events and of the methodologies used to study these events. Furthermore, we discuss the evolution of the multi-risk field, including vulnerability dynamics, policy frameworks, and adaptation challenges. These introductory talks are then followed by two applied sessions that provide hands-on training: we will discuss an application of vine copulas for multivariate dependence analysis, and the application of large language models for structured impact extraction from news media.
All materials and setup instructions are available on the short course website.
Short course attendees are welcome to attend the annual multi-risk dinner on Tuesday May 5th - 19:00h at Gleis//Garten (Eichenstraße 2, 1120 Wien, Austria) by signing up here
Schedule
| Time (CEST) | Session | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 08:30 – 08:35 | Welcome and overview | Conveners |
| 08:35 – 08:50 | Introduction I: Overview of compound events | Chris White |
| 08:50 – 09:05 | Introduction II: From single-hazard to multi-risk | Marleen de Ruiter |
| 09:05 – 09:40 | Application I: Vine copulas for multivariate dependence | Judith Claassen |
| 09:40 – 10:15 | Application II: Extracting climate impacts from text with LLMs | Taís M. Nunes Carvalho |