Dealing with natural hazards often means predicting and acting under uncertainty. While this uncertainty may have a negative connotation, it is an essential part of communicating and supporting decisions about natural hazards. Regardless, research on natural hazards and disasters has seen a steep, though selective, rise in the amount and diversity of freely available data, and many new technologies to use them. Data have become ubiquitous and made information a powerful currency. Yet, more than ever, we need to filter from these data for making informed predictions, thus adding new layers of uncertainty.

Oliver Korup is a professor of natural hazards at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He researches and teaches at the interface between natural hazards, geomorphology, and data science. He has worked on rapid erosion and sediment transport in active mountain belts and their forelands in High Asia, the Andes, the European Alps, and the Southern Alps of New Zealand. His current research interests concern objective methods of predicting the occurrence and consequences of rare events such as large, catastrophic landslides, pyroclastic eruptions, and glacial lake outburst floods.

Part of the Hazard, Risk and Disaster (HRD) Research Lecture Series 2022-23. More information and tickets online here.