Abstract ID: 3.12534 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

Enhancing our knowledge of how multiple hazards interact, trigger cascading impacts, and are influenced by societal processes is key to understanding risk in mountain regions. Analysing multiple hazards and their consequences in time over different sectors requires systemic approaches. To address this challenge, the Horizon Europe PARATUS project developed a framework integrating two approaches: (i) a structured methodology for forensic disaster analysis and (ii) impact chains. This integration provides deeper insights into disaster risk and cascading effects, learning from past events while offering a structured understanding of risk, combining the physical and social dimensions. Forensic disaster analysis systematically examines past events, focusing on socio-ecological dynamics, root causes, and human agency that contribute to risk materialization. This approach does not only document damages and losses but investigates different vulnerability dimensions and how these emerged pinpointing DRR measures undertaken to face the historical events as well as gaps which still need to be addressed to face current and future risks. By analysing policies, decisions, and systemic failures that influenced disaster outcomes, forensic analysis helps to identify weaknesses in risk management practices. Impact chains (ICs), provide a structured conceptual model to visualize the relationships between key risk components (hazard, exposure, and vulnerability) while capturing indirect and cascading consequences. ICs provide a general representation of different risk components interactions under current and future conditions, not focussing on a single past event but being informed by it. By making these interconnections explicit, ICs facilitate the identification of critical intervention points for disaster risk reduction. This integrated framework has been applied across diverse geographic and socio-economic contexts. With this contribution we present its application in the South-Eastern Alps. A general impact chain to describe current risks related to heavy rains and windstorms was developed, learning from past events such as the storm Vaia (2018) and other minor events which led to infrastructure failure and forest damage. The framework has proven effective in identifying systemic vulnerabilities and key lessons from past disaster events, enhancing disaster risk management of future extreme events.