President: Heidi Kreibich
(Emailnh@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Nivedita Sairam
(Email)
ECS Representative: Elisa Grazia Lucia Nobile
(Emailecs-nh@egu.eu)
The Natural Hazards (NH) Division covers all natural hazards that can produce damage to the environment and to the society. Therefore, it is a place where scientists and researchers of various geosciences disciplines meet with sociologists, economists and people responsible for territorial and urban security and planning policies. The aim is to improve the understanding of the evolution of the processes and to discuss new technologies, methods and strategies to mitigate their disastrous effects. The division is structured in eleven subdivisions as follows: Hydro-Meteorological Hazards, Volcanic Hazards, Landslide and Snow Avalanche Hazards, Earthquake Hazards, Sea and Ocean Hazards, Remote Sensing, AI, Data Science & Hazards, Wildfire Hazards, Environmental, Biological and Natech Hazards, Natural Hazards and Society, Multi-Hazards and Climate Hazards. Most of the topics that are treated in the NH Division are also treated in other EGU divisions, which is expected due to the intrinsic transversal nature of the NH Division.
The NH Division is one of the historical Divisions of the EGU that was established when EGU was founded and has been and is one of the largest divisions to which many geo-scientists provide steadily contributions of papers and ideas over the years.
As for all EGU Divisions, an Early Career Scientist Award is established also for the NH Division and is given to young researchers who obtain outstanding results in the assessment and mitigation of natural hazard. In addition, the NH Division awards the Plinius Medal that recognises outstanding interdisciplinary natural-hazard research and the Soloviev Medal that recognises outstanding scientific contributions in fundamental research on natural hazards. Both medals are open for all career stages.
Latest posts from the NH blog
Same hills, different rules: why urban and rural landslides should not be considered together?
Cities are expanding faster than ever, often onto steep and unstable terrain. As urban areas grow, landslides increasingly threaten homes, roads, and critical infrastructure. To manage this risk, scientists produce landslide susceptibility maps, which estimate where landslides are most likely to occur. These maps are widely used by planners and decision-makers. But there is a quiet assumption built into many of these maps: that landslides occurring in cities and those happening in surrounding rural areas follow the same rules. Our …
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Extreme hourly rainfall is increasing in Italy: insights from high-resolution climate reanalysis
Intense rainfall lasting only a few hours is often enough to trigger natural hazards such as flash floods and landslides, leading to severe damage to infrastructure. These short-lived events are among the most dangerous natural hazards in the Mediterranean region, yet they are also among the hardest to study. Their small spatial scale and brief duration mean that they are often missed or underestimated by traditional climate datasets. Understanding how their frequency and intensity are changing is therefore crucial for …
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Hunting for historical Adriatic meteotsunamis
Before modern instruments, our only clues about past sea events came from written records and folklore. Along the eastern Adriatic coast, stories of sudden floods and “tidal waves” (locally called šćiga) have been passed down for generations. These waves, described as rapid rises and falls of the sea that could flood or empty harbours within minutes, were carved into Adriatic coastal life as rare but unforgettable events. Today, we know that many of them were meteotsunamis: tsunami-like waves triggered by …
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Living with a restless giant: The challenge of multi-risk management and communication at Campi Flegrei Volcano
Nestled within one of Europe’s most densely populated regions, the Campi Flegrei caldera is a volcanic system whose secular unrest shapes the daily life of its inhabitants. Here, during the last decade and still ongoing crisis, ground uplift, frequent earthquakes, and persistent gas emissions interact to create a complex, evolving multi-risk environment. These natural hazards rarely follow simple patterns: they overlap, cascade, or unfold independently, challenging scientists, authorities, and communities alike. As the ongoing unrest intensifies, long-standing questions about forecasting, …
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Recent awardees
The 2026 Plinius Medal is awarded to
Amir AghaKouchak for outstanding interdisciplinary contributions to understanding and mitigating Anthropogenic Drought, hydrologic extremes, and compound hazards.
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- 2026
- Sergey Soloviev Medal
The 2026 Sergey Soloviev Medal is awarded to
Gerassimos A. Papadopoulos for promoting innovative research on geohazards that led to a new tsunami intensity scale, improving the analysis of foreshock seismic sequences and for the development of tsunami warning systems.
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- 2026
- Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists
The 2026 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to
Nivedita Sairam in recognition of exceptional contributions to systemic modelling of compounding and cascading flood impacts.
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The 2025 Plinius Medal is awarded to
Annegret Henriette Thieken in recognition of outstanding contributions to the understanding and mitigation of flood risk, and the design of adaptation management strategies informed by the involvement of affected communities.
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- 2025
- Sergey Soloviev Medal
The 2025 Sergey Soloviev Medal is awarded to
Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano for creating a novel drought indicator, which has become the benchmark for quantifying droughts, and for pioneering studies in the integration of different drought typologies.
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- 2025
- Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award
The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to
Clarence Gagnon The role of extratropical cyclones in flooding in Quebec, Canada, from 1991 to 2020
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- 2025
- Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award
The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to
Julián Montejo Optimal site hazard grid for probabilistic risk assessment: A two-step approach
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- 2025
- Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists
The 2025 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to
Mariana Madruga de Brito for outstanding contributions to understanding of the socio-economic impacts and risk mitigation of extreme hydrological events, using natural language processing and social science computational methods.
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Current issue of the EGU newsletter
In our February issue, we are following pioneering scientists into extreme places in the name of discovery, from a day-in-the-life of an Antarctic researcher working on the sea ice to how the Viking spaceships took space plasma from theory to observation. Marie Cavitte shares her experience of the Blue Book traineeship in science for policy and Elsa Abs talks about their work with soil microbes. EGU's President thanks our 12,000 volunteers from 2025 and we share the 24 training schools and member-organised meetings we have funded in 2026. Deadlines approach for the EGU26 photo competition and Early-bird registration fees, and there is a job vacancy in the EGU Executive office in Munich, Germany!
All this and much more, in this month's Loupe!
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Current issue of the NH division newsletter
Welcome from the NH Division Team
Dear colleagues and friends,
We’re excited to share the very first issue of the newsletter from the EGU Natural Hazards (NH) Division! With this newsletter, we aim to keep you informed, connected, and inspired — whether you’re a long-time member or newly joining our community.
This inaugural issue is timed with the EGU General Assembly 2025, and it’s packed with highlights, upcoming events, and ways to get involved.
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