Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment at the Canary Islands

Abstract

The term “multi-hazard” is a concept that is increasingly gaining ground in national and international disaster reduction policies. However, its implementation is still timid, and the initiatives that have been carried out are important but insufficient. Multi-hazard scenarios are still difficult to implement due to the complexity of the interactions between the different hazards, the lack of addressed research on this topic, and the uncertainty of their consequences at different spatial and temporal scales. Due to their intrinsic multi-hazard nature and their social, economic, and political context, volcanic islands are particularly vulnerable to these scenarios. These environments require adopting a multi-hazard perspective to design new multi-risk management programmes to reduce risk effectively. The case of the Canary Islands, an active volcanic archipelago that also suffers from multiple non-volcanic geohazards, is a clear example of such complex multi-hazard scenarios. With a worrying overpopulation and tourism that make this management difficult, and with emergency plans that do not consider this multi-hazard perspective, natural disasters may accentuate in the near future. This is also applicable to other volcanic islands in similar situations.