Prof. Christan Geiß together with colleagues Elisabeth Schoepfer, Torsten Riedlinger, and Hannes Taubenböck edited this special issue on "Multimodal Characterization of Built and Natural Environments for Multi-Risk Assessment". Christan Geiß is professor for Georisk Research using Remote Sensing Methods at the Depratment of Geography, University of Bonn, in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center. His research group focusses on Remote Sensing Techniques for Natural Hazard Risk Assessment and the development of novel Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence methods, earth observation techniques, and natural hazard risk and impact assessment.
The special issue documents scientific progress regarding the spatial refinement of existing natural hazard-related exposure information based on earth observation data (Geiß et al. 2022), bottom-up modeling of an elements-at-risk database (Bhuyan et al. 2022), and mapping of exposure including static and functional components in a multi-hazard context (Pittore et al. 2023). Moreover, novel epistemological insights regarding the timely evolution of exposure patterns are provided for the cities of Nairobi and Nyeri in Kenya (Fekete 2022) and Medellín in Colombia (Kühnl et al. 2022) concerning floods and landslides, respectively. Moreover, an innovative multi-hazard susceptibility index and a transferrable disaster risk approach are presented (Kabiru et al. 2023). New analytical tools are provided in the context of potential disruptions of the road infrastructure (Solheim et al. 2023), assessment of the vulnerability of atmospheric storage tanks (Wang and Weng 2021), and impact of high-velocity and debris-laden floods in steep terrains on riparian buildings (Gautam et al. 2022). To establish a holistic risk perspective, a Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities framework is introduced (Buck et al. 2022). Also, a multi-risk assessment workflow is proposed in the context of seismic and flood hazards (Arrighi et al. 2022). Finally, a novel software tool for multi-risk assessment is introduced (Paulik et al. 2022).