Social and environmental systems are confronted with more frequent hazards (incl. natural hazards, diseases, etc.) and their impacts. This has been leading to an increase in the number of people affected, casualties and socio-economic and environmental losses. We believe that integrated assessment methods are required to represent, analyze and communicate risks in a way that is understandable and actionable to decision makers and communities at risk. This includes information on the stressor and the vulnerability of the system that is affected.

For this special session at the GI_Forum 2017 we call for contributions dealing with spatial analysis, integrated assessment and novel visualization/communication approaches to address such challenges. We thus invite researchers and practitioners to submit contributions tackling the following thematic and methodological topics:

• Thematically: Contributions comprise topics such as integrated risk and vulnerability assessments in the field of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation or public health and beyond.

• Methodologically: We seek for submissions which apply spatial statistics, index-based approaches/multi-criteria analysis, remote sensing and novel visualization/decision support tools for the assessment, analysis and communication of risk and vulnerability at different spatial and temporal scales.

GI_Forum is organized by the <link http: www.uni-salzburg.at external-link-new-window external link in new>University of Salzburg, under the coordination of the <link http: www.zgis.at index.php en external-link-new-window external link in new>Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS and in cooperation with the <link http: www.oeaw.ac.at en austrian-academy-of-sciences external-link-new-window external link in new>Austrian Academy of Sciences, and runs concurrently with the highly regarded German language conference on Applied Geoinformatics - <link http: www.agit.at external-link-new-window external link in new>AGIT. The two symposia share the innovative <link http: www.gi-forum.org expo external-link-new-window external link in new>AGIT EXPO exhibit and stimulating social Events.

Submission: Types & Deadlines

Contributions can either be submitted as a full paper, extended abstract or poster. Authors of accepted full papers and Extended Abstracts are invited to present and discuss their paper (15'+5') in the special session. Authors of accepted posters are invited for a lightning talk (5'). Full papers and extended abstracts will be published in the <link http: www.gi-forum.org journal external-link-new-window external link in new>GI-Forum Journal (Open Access).

• February 1, 2017 deadline for submission of full and short papers, extended abstracts for poster presentation
• May 1, 2017 late deadline for submission of extended abstracts for poster presentation

Contact

The special session is jointly organized by <link http: www.uni-salzburg.at external-link-new-window external link in new>Stefan Kienberger (Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS, University of Salzburg), <link http: population.univie.ac.at menschen team marion-borderon external-link-new-window external link in new>Marion Borderon (Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna) and <link http: ehs.unu.edu experts researchexperts external-link-new-window external link in new>Michael Hagenlocher (United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, UNU-EHS).

More information: <link http: www.gi-forum.org risk external-link-new-window external link in new>www.gi-forum.org/risk