Understanding Extreme Geohazards: The Science of the Disaster Risk Management Cycle European Science Foundation Conference November 28 to December 1, 2011, Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain

Opening Words

Hans-Peter Plag, Conference Co-Chair, and Co-Chair, Geohazards Community of Practice (GHCP of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

I would like to welcome you to this European Science Foundation and COST high level science conference on extreme geohazards. I want to make just one remark here. When we talk about extreme geohazards, one thing that comes to mind is a Black Swan. A Black Swan is defined as something that is outside of our regular experience and it is also something that has an extreme impact. It carries a high impact. It comes as a surprise, but afterwards we know that we could have explained it. We have many examples of Black Swans in the socioeconomic area. For example, the First World War was a Black Swan. Nobody predicted it, it was outside the regular experience, had a high impact, and afterwards we had a lot of people explaining it and why it had to happen.

The Internet. Harry Potter. There are many examples of Black Swans. For me, the question is what would be the impact of having Black Swans in the natural hazard area? An event we could have expected, but we didn’t. But it happened. An event with a very high impact, much larger than what we have seen in the last 50 or 100 years. And specifically, what are the potentials for Black Swans in geohazards? We have many examples for the long-distance past, for example, Santorini, or, not too far ago, Krakatau. So there are many examples of potential Black Swans. And many of us as scientists have identified potentially large threats of geohazards. We know there are some threats waiting for us.

For me, the question is actually, is there a potential for a high-impact event that we do not think about enough? An event that could result from a domino effect: From the fact that we have built into areas that are very hazardous, we have a population sprawling into these areas without being aware of very big events and the interaction of human disasters triggered by the natural hazards like we saw in Japan. Is there something we have not taken into account that will surprise us? Afterwards we will all be able to explain why it had to happen.

I would like for all of you to be very open-minded in this conference over the next four days and to think about what are the combinations that we are not really thinking about that could trigger something that would be as threatening for our civilization as Santorini was some four thousand years ago for the Mediterranean civilization. I think that should be the main focus for us here at this conference: to think about the unthinkable.

With this, I would like to open this conference and first I would like to ask Paola Campus to come up here and introduce us to the European Science Foundation which has enabled this conference.