Given the conditions of global environmental change such as outlined in the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, impacts from natural hazards on natural and human systems are manifest worldwide. Such impacts are the result of both the frequency and magnitude of the hazard and the exposure of the society or elements at risk, such as buildings or infrastructure lines. In recent years, the concepts of vulnerability and resilience (again) became popular in environmental hazard and risk management. Ideas and concepts of vulnerability and resilience are used by various scholars from different scientific disciplines – as well as by practitioners and institutions – and hence are used in multiple disciplinary models underpinning either a technical or a social origin of the concept and resulting in a range of paradigms for either a qualitative or quantitative assessment, both scale-dependent. Despite the growing amount of studies recently published, current approaches are still driven by a divide between natural and social sciences, even if some attempts have been made to bridge this gap.

Acknowledging different roots of disciplinary paradigms, methods determining structural, economic, institutional or social vulnerability and resilience should be interwoven in order to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and resilience, and to adapt to ongoing global change processes. Therefore, there is a need to expand our vision on hazard and risk management, integrating adaptation and mitigation approaches into the broader context of related governance arrangements.

This special issue summarizes the assessment of different types of vulnerabilities (e.g. social, personal, structural, economic, political, environmental) and resilience and presents applications to different natural hazards. The main focus is to present multiple strategies based on developments from different disciplines and to discuss these according to similarities, but also differences. Researchers as well as practitioners will be encouraged to present case studies and applications, as well as conceptual ideas and new methods on the analysis with respect to natural hazards. The contributors are encouraged to use the supplementary material options provided by NHESS.

This special issue is related to session NH9.7 of the EGU General Assembly 2015, held in Vienna, Austria, but is also open to other contributions not presented during this session.