EMERGE: Multi-hazards and emergent risks in Northern Europe's remote and vulnerable regions

Weather-driven hazards, such as floods, storms, landslides and severe winter weather, account for 90% of the world's natural disasters, causing significant impacts to people, infrastructure and natural environments. Across Northern Europe, these hazards are becoming more pervasive in a changing climate. As they do, and as other 'emergent' hazards, such as wildfires and droughts, start to affect parts of Northern Europe where they have not before, transport links and supply chains, ecosystems, agricultural yields and forestry are increasingly being impacted. These impacts are intrinsically linked to resilience and coping capacities, with their severity greatest in the most vulnerable and remote regions, including people, economies and communities, the infrastructure that supports and connects them, and the goods and services they produce. Recent floods and landslides in remote regions across Northern Europe have been related to the same weather systems, however our understanding of the timing and impacts from these interconnected events is poorly understood, highlighting a critical need to better understand, and find novel solutions to, the emerging risks of weather-driven natural hazards in remote regions.

The EMERGE project, formed by a new multi-hazard focused international partnership between the University of Strathclyde, the Icelandic Meteorological Office, and the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, in collaboration with British Geological Society, Newcastle University, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, brings together experts to explore weather-driven hazards - primarily extreme rainfall, landslides and floods - and their emergent and compounding risks across Northern Europe's remote and vulnerable regions. EMERGE has a focus of the UK, Norway and Iceland, aimed at bringing together researchers that work in similar climatic zones to foster collaboration and create novel, cutting-edge science that is beneficial to both the UK and its near neighbours.

EMERGE's activities will address critical research questions relating to: (1) the emergence and compounding risks of weather-driven natural hazards in remote regions; (2) the observation, prediction and monitoring of these hazards across the UK, Iceland and Norway; and (3) regional research priorities and resilience-building strategies. These will be explored through a series of expert workshops and 'living labs' in Glasgow, Oslo and Reykjavik, supported by wider dissemination activities, that will create a forum that fosters open scientific collaboration, knowledge brokering and information sharing, and identifies needs and opportunities.

Our remote communities and environments must undergo significant change if they are to successfully transition to being climate resilient. The grand challenge presented by climate change, combined with the disproportionate impacts of natural hazards in remote regions, demands a new international approach to society's interaction with the environment in order to build a more equitable and sustainable future. The new partnerships formed by EMERGE will develop world-leading research to produce critical new scientific knowledge and support the development of solutions that build climate resilience in some of our most vulnerable regions.