Extreme Events: Building Climate Resilient Societies

The overall objective of the conference is to elucidate the relations between climate extremes, societal resilience, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Development and transformation for achieving the SDGs can be severely threatened by catastrophic events triggered by climate extremes. Yet, at the same time, development towards reaching the SDGs may enhance societal resilience against such extremes. Participants will identify the major obstacles for building climate resilience across regions and sectors, as well as priorities and means to address these obstacles. The aim is to develop both strategic agendas for research and for best-practice design and implementation.

The conference is organized around 5 parallel workshop sessions:

1. Challenges of extreme events for resilient infrastructures
2. Climate Extremes and Food Security
3. Climate Extremes and Security
4. Data science for human wellbeing
5. Response to compound events.

The parallel sessions are guided by the following research questions:

1. Which impacts are expected to be caused by extreme climate events (incl. compound events, impacts cascades and feedbacks) across ecosystems, infrastructures and society?
2. What are key obstacles (e.g. financing, governance, data & system knowledge) towards societal resilience across sectors and SDGs?
3. What knowledge is needed to remove these obstacles and how can research, teaching and learning support the transformation towards SDGs while facing climate extremes?

The sessions are considered to emerge bottom-up – hence you may think about contributing themes there. Each session will be formed by approximately 30 participants.

Researchers from all disciplines and professionals from business and administration working in the field of extreme events and resilient societies are welcome to attend the conference.

The Volkswagen Foundation offers travel grants for early career researchers (PhD students and early Post Docs up to 5 years since PhD) or young professionals with a link to climate extremes and resilient societies from all fields (e.g. history, climate science, data science, economics, ecology, geography, health, mathematics, psychology, sociology, risk assessment, political sciences). Applicants can win one of 25 travel grants to take part in the Herrenhausen Conference “Extreme Events: Building Climate Resilient Societies” in Hanover, Germany, on October 9 -11 2019. Successful applicants will get the chance to present their research/project in a 2-minute lightning talk and during the poster sessions. The travel grants include travel expenses to Hanover, visa fees (if applicable), and accommodation in Hanover.

Please apply for a travel grant by completing the online application form. The deadline for submitting applications is March 28, 2019.