Risk Assessment and Sustainable Development in Natural Hazards

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, the demand from stakeholders for information on natural hazard risks is highlighted in several reports (e.g. Global Assessment Reports on Disaster Risk Reduction and IPCC SREX) and its knowledge is crucial to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals, and the Sendai framework. Knowledge of the driving factors in natural hazard risk assessment is the essential basis for preventive policy and action for risk reduction. Such information is valuable to stakeholders from the (re-)insurance sector, governance and spatial planning.

This Special Issue of Sustainability aims to include contributions with case studies or research articles related to natural hazard risk assessment, spatial planning and the application of the principles of sustainable development, addressing both spatial and temporal changes in underlying risk drivers, i.e. articles focusing on hazard, exposure, and vulnerability are also welcome. A wide set of natural hazards will be considered (e.g. floods, landslides, earthquakes, etc.).

The topics of interest include hazard, vulnerability, exposure and/or risk assessment, and also applications of risk assessment to spatial planning at the local and national levels.

This Special Issue focuses on:

• natural hazard profiles and mapping, in terms of the hazard, exposure of people and assets, and/or vulnerability of people and assets;
• hazard assessment, risk management and land use planning;
• approaches to consider and address decision-making at the individual, community, and national levels taking into account sustainable development and/or risk assessment in the spatial planning process;
•  perspectives of natural hazards, risk assessment, spatial planning in different scales, and decision-making;
• hazard, vulnerability and/or exposure reduction and adaptation to natural hazards;
• other topics that bridge the topics of natural hazards, risk and sustainability.

Dr. Susana Pereira
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• natural hazards
• hazard assessment
• vulnerability
• exposure
• risk management
• spatial planning
• sustainable development