Reinhard Mechler
Biographic Data
| ID | 1405028 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Reinhard Mechler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Reinhard |
| FAMILY NAME | Mechler |
| SIGNATURE | MECHLER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2239-1578 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Realized resilience after community flood events
Flooding is a major global natural hazard, with resulting disasters disproportionately affecting communities in developing countries. Enhancing community resilience is crucial for reducing flood risk, managing impacts and ultimately protecting sustainable development gains. Yet, there is little validated empirical evidence, particularly at the community scale, of the relationship between resilience characteristics before a natural hazard-event oc…
Understanding multiple resilience dividends and system boundaries in disaster- and climate-risk management
Challenges in managing multi-hazards and multi-risks within complex risk landscapes—where numerous stakeholders with different priority needs and risk perceptions interact—remain unresolved. Here we suggest ways to tackle these pressing challenges in an integrated and comprehensive manner by applying key concepts from systemic risk research to triple- and multiple-dividend approaches. The central idea is that additional dividends (i.e., economic,…
Challenges and opportunities in climate risk assessment
As climate change impacts intensify worldwide, assessing climate risks comprehensively is essential for guiding effective disaster risk management and adaptation strategies. This systematic literature review examines the latest developments in Climate Risk Assessment (CRA), focusing on how climate risks are framed and assessed. It explores advancements, ongoing challenges, and emerging opportunities to guide future generations of CRAs. Key findin…
A new dynamic framework is required to assess adaptation limits
Anthropogenic climate change is already causing dangerous and widespread disruptions in global ecological and social systems and affects the lives of billions of people around the world. Even with scaled-up risk management and adaptation, the limits of adaptation will often be reached. Currently, very little is known about the degree to which societies can adapt to climate change, and where and when limits to adaptation will be reached. In this p…
A taxonomy-based understanding of community flood resilience
Reducing disaster risk and enhancing resilience are major global societal challenges. To inform this challenge, understanding resilience at the community level is especially important because the impact of disasters and the potential for resilient development are particularly acute at this scale. The last decade has seen a surge in efforts in measuring resilience to a variety of hazards, yet measurement frameworks lack empirical validation and wi…
Quantifying community resilience to riverine hazards in Bangladesh
Every year, 30–70% of Bangladesh is inundated with flood waters, which combined with erosion, affect between 10 and 70 million people annually. Rural riverine communities in Bangladesh have long been identified as some of the poorest populations, most vulnerable to riverine hazards. However, these communities have, for generations, also developed resilience strategies – considered as the combination of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative app…
Finance for Loss and Damage
The climate policy discourse on Loss and Damage has been considering options for averting, minimizing and addressing critical and increasingly systemic climate-related risks in vulnerable countries. Research has started to identify possible finance sources and mechanisms, but stopped short of positioning those options along a comprehensive risk management framework in line with the whole scope of Loss&Damage. BuildingTaking a risk analytical pers…
A co-designed heuristic guide for investigating the peace-sustainability nexus in the context of global change
Root causes of recurrent catastrophe
Peru has experienced a long history of disasters linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), including during the global El Niño events of 1982–83 and 1997–98. This history has contributed to progress in ENSO forecasting and preparation, as well as broader development of the country's disaster risk management (DRM) capacities. Despite such advances, in early 2017 Peru was devastated by a localized “coastal El Niño” event. This study examin…
Perspectives on transformational change in climate risk management and adaptation
In the context of strong evidence on mounting climate-related risks and impacts across the globe, the need for ‘transformational change’ in climate risk management and adaptation responses has been brought forward as an important element to achieve the Paris ambitions. In the past decade, the concept has experienced increasing popularity in policy debates and academic discussions but has seen heterogeneous applications and little practical insigh…
The Australian wildfires from a systems dependency perspective
Wildfires are a normal occurrence in much of the world, with many fire adapted ecosystems and societies (Moritz et al 2014). However, a number of drivers appear to be increasing the fire risk and propensity for losses globally (Anon 2019). These drivers include global climate change which through heat and drying is increasing landscape flammability (Podur and Wotton 2010; IPCC 2019, Jones et al 2020). Exposure is being exacerbated through increas…
Loss and Damage and limits to adaptation
Recent evidence shows that climate change is leading to irreversible and existential impacts on vulnerable communities and countries across the globe. Among other effects, this has given rise to public debate and engagement around notions of climate crisis and emergency. The Loss and Damage (L&D) policy debate has emphasized these aspects over the last three decades. Yet, despite institutionalization through an article on L&D by the United Nation…
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
This book provides an authoritative insight on the Loss and Damage discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research and policy linked to this discourse and articulating its multiple concepts, principles and methods. Written by leading researchers and practitioners, it identifies practical and evidence-based policy options to inform the discourse and climate negotiations. With climate-related risks on the rise and impacts being felt around the …
Science for Loss and Damage. Findings and Propositions
The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was established in 2013 and further supported through the Paris Agreement in 2015…
An overview of serious games for disaster risk management – Prospects and limitations for informing actions to arrest increasing risk
This paper reviews serious games/simulations addressing issues related to disaster risk management (DRM) and serving as educational and engagement tools for affected communities, policy-makers, and other stakeholders. Building on earlier research in collecting and classifying serious games, we provide an objective and thorough overview of 45 non-commercial digital and analog gaming activities related to DRM, analyzing their characteristics, targe…
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
An overdue alignment of risk and resilience? A conceptual contribution to community resilience
A systematic review of literature on community resilience measurement published between 2005 and 2014 revealed that the profound lack of clarity on risk and resilience is one of the main reasons why confusion about terms such as adaptive capacity, resilience, and vulnerability persists, despite the effort spared to operationalise these concepts. Resilience is measured in isolation in some cases, where a shock is perceived to arise external to the…
Applying Recent Insights From Climate Risk Management to Operationalize the Loss and Damage Mechanism
Flood risk and climate change
A holistic perspective on changing rainfall-driven flood risk is provided for the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Economic losses from floods have greatly increased, principally driven by the expanding exposure of assets at risk. It has not been possible to attribute rain-generated peak streamflow trends to anthropogenic climate change over the past several decades. Projected increases in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall, based o…
Funding public adaptation to climate-related disasters. Estimates for a global fund
Ecological macroeconomics
Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of disaster risk management in a development context
Limited studies have shown that disaster risk management (DRM) can be cost-efficient in a development context. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an evaluation tool to analyse economic efficiency. This research introduces quantitative, stochastic CBA frameworks and applies them in case studies of flood and drought risk reduction in India and Pakistan, while also incorporating projected climate change impacts. DRM interventions are shown to be economi…
Determinants of Risk
Many climate change adaptation efforts aim to address the implications of potential changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of weather and climate events that affect the risk of extreme impacts on human society. That risk is determined not only by the climate and weather events (the hazards) but also by the exposure and vulnerability to these hazards. Therefore, effective adaptation and disaster risk management strategies and practices …
Summary for Policymakers
This Summary for Policymakers presents key findings from the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The SREX approaches the topic by assessing the scientific literature on issues that range from the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events ("climate extremes") to the implications of these events for society and sustainable development. The…
Natural disaster risk in Asian megacities
Loss and Damage and limits to adaptation
Recent evidence shows that climate change is leading to irreversible and existential impacts on vulnerable communities and countries across the globe. Among other effects, this has given rise to public debate and engagement around notions of climate crisis and emergency. The Loss and Damage (L&D) policy debate has emphasized these aspects over the last three decades. Yet, despite institutionalization through an article on L&D by the United Nation…
An overdue alignment of risk and resilience? A conceptual contribution to community resilience
A systematic review of literature on community resilience measurement published between 2005 and 2014 revealed that the profound lack of clarity on risk and resilience is one of the main reasons why confusion about terms such as adaptive capacity, resilience, and vulnerability persists, despite the effort spared to operationalise these concepts. Resilience is measured in isolation in some cases, where a shock is perceived to arise external to the…
The use of scenarios as the basis for combined assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation
Natural disaster risk in Asian megacities
Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of disaster risk management in a development context
Limited studies have shown that disaster risk management (DRM) can be cost-efficient in a development context. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an evaluation tool to analyse economic efficiency. This research introduces quantitative, stochastic CBA frameworks and applies them in case studies of flood and drought risk reduction in India and Pakistan, while also incorporating projected climate change impacts. DRM interventions are shown to be economi…
Applying Recent Insights From Climate Risk Management to Operationalize the Loss and Damage Mechanism
Funding public adaptation to climate-related disasters. Estimates for a global fund
A new dynamic framework is required to assess adaptation limits
Anthropogenic climate change is already causing dangerous and widespread disruptions in global ecological and social systems and affects the lives of billions of people around the world. Even with scaled-up risk management and adaptation, the limits of adaptation will often be reached. Currently, very little is known about the degree to which societies can adapt to climate change, and where and when limits to adaptation will be reached. In this p…
Finance for Loss and Damage
The climate policy discourse on Loss and Damage has been considering options for averting, minimizing and addressing critical and increasingly systemic climate-related risks in vulnerable countries. Research has started to identify possible finance sources and mechanisms, but stopped short of positioning those options along a comprehensive risk management framework in line with the whole scope of Loss&Damage. BuildingTaking a risk analytical pers…
The Contribution from Shipping Emissions to Air Quality and Acid Deposition in Europe
A global three-dimensional Lagrangian chemistry-transport model STOCHEM is used to describe the European regional acid deposition and ozone air quality impacts along the Atlantic Ocean seaboard of Europe, from the SO2, NOx, VOCs and CO emissions from international shipping under conditions appropriate to the year 2000. Model-derived total sulfur deposition from international shipping reaches over 200 mg S m-2 yr-1 over the southwestern approaches…
Quantifying community resilience to riverine hazards in Bangladesh
Every year, 30–70% of Bangladesh is inundated with flood waters, which combined with erosion, affect between 10 and 70 million people annually. Rural riverine communities in Bangladesh have long been identified as some of the poorest populations, most vulnerable to riverine hazards. However, these communities have, for generations, also developed resilience strategies – considered as the combination of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative app…
A co-designed heuristic guide for investigating the peace-sustainability nexus in the context of global change
A methodology for incorporating natural catastrophes into macroeconomic projections
This paper addresses a critical problem in macroeconomic planning for natural disaster losses: how to incorporate potential future losses into current planning activity. The authors develop a technique to integrate probabilistic natural hazard losses into macroeconomic planning models. Probabilistic losses to capital stock (direct losses) serve as input to a macroeconomic model, which consequently calculates the macroeconomic impacts. The macroec…
The Contribution from Shipping Emissions to Air Quality and Acid Deposition in Europe
A global three-dimensional Lagrangian chemistry-transport model STOCHEM is used to describe the European regional acid deposition and ozone air quality impacts along the Atlantic Ocean seaboard of Europe, from the SO2, NOx, VOCs and CO emissions from international shipping under conditions appropriate to the year 2000. Model-derived total sulfur deposition from international shipping reaches over 200 mg S m-2 yr-1 over the southwestern approaches…
The Contribution from Shipping Emissions to Air Quality and Acid Deposition in Europe
A global three-dimensional Lagrangian chemistry-transport model STOCHEM is used to describe the European regional acid deposition and ozone air quality impacts along the Atlantic Ocean seaboard of Europe, from the SO2, NOx, VOCs and CO emissions from international shipping under conditions appropriate to the year 2000. Model-derived total sulfur deposition from international shipping reaches over 200 mg S m(-2) yr(-1) over the southwestern approa…
Disasters And Economic Welfare
The debate on whether natural disasters cause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinder devlopment is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines have focused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paper looks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate, and examines whether traditional and alternative national savings measures combined with adjustments for the destruction of capital stocks may contribute to better explaining po…
The use of scenarios as the basis for combined assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation
Natural disaster risk in Asian megacities
Determinants of Risk
Many climate change adaptation efforts aim to address the implications of potential changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of weather and climate events that affect the risk of extreme impacts on human society. That risk is determined not only by the climate and weather events (the hazards) but also by the exposure and vulnerability to these hazards. Therefore, effective adaptation and disaster risk management strategies and practices …
Summary for Policymakers
This Summary for Policymakers presents key findings from the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The SREX approaches the topic by assessing the scientific literature on issues that range from the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events ("climate extremes") to the implications of these events for society and sustainable development. The…
Ecological macroeconomics
Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of disaster risk management in a development context
Limited studies have shown that disaster risk management (DRM) can be cost-efficient in a development context. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an evaluation tool to analyse economic efficiency. This research introduces quantitative, stochastic CBA frameworks and applies them in case studies of flood and drought risk reduction in India and Pakistan, while also incorporating projected climate change impacts. DRM interventions are shown to be economi…
Flood risk and climate change
A holistic perspective on changing rainfall-driven flood risk is provided for the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Economic losses from floods have greatly increased, principally driven by the expanding exposure of assets at risk. It has not been possible to attribute rain-generated peak streamflow trends to anthropogenic climate change over the past several decades. Projected increases in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall, based o…
Funding public adaptation to climate-related disasters. Estimates for a global fund
Applying Recent Insights From Climate Risk Management to Operationalize the Loss and Damage Mechanism
An overview of serious games for disaster risk management – Prospects and limitations for informing actions to arrest increasing risk
This paper reviews serious games/simulations addressing issues related to disaster risk management (DRM) and serving as educational and engagement tools for affected communities, policy-makers, and other stakeholders. Building on earlier research in collecting and classifying serious games, we provide an objective and thorough overview of 45 non-commercial digital and analog gaming activities related to DRM, analyzing their characteristics, targe…
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
An overdue alignment of risk and resilience? A conceptual contribution to community resilience
A systematic review of literature on community resilience measurement published between 2005 and 2014 revealed that the profound lack of clarity on risk and resilience is one of the main reasons why confusion about terms such as adaptive capacity, resilience, and vulnerability persists, despite the effort spared to operationalise these concepts. Resilience is measured in isolation in some cases, where a shock is perceived to arise external to the…
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
This book provides an authoritative insight on the Loss and Damage discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research and policy linked to this discourse and articulating its multiple concepts, principles and methods. Written by leading researchers and practitioners, it identifies practical and evidence-based policy options to inform the discourse and climate negotiations. With climate-related risks on the rise and impacts being felt around the …
Science for Loss and Damage. Findings and Propositions
The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was established in 2013 and further supported through the Paris Agreement in 2015…
Root causes of recurrent catastrophe
Peru has experienced a long history of disasters linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), including during the global El Niño events of 1982–83 and 1997–98. This history has contributed to progress in ENSO forecasting and preparation, as well as broader development of the country's disaster risk management (DRM) capacities. Despite such advances, in early 2017 Peru was devastated by a localized “coastal El Niño” event. This study examin…
Perspectives on transformational change in climate risk management and adaptation
In the context of strong evidence on mounting climate-related risks and impacts across the globe, the need for ‘transformational change’ in climate risk management and adaptation responses has been brought forward as an important element to achieve the Paris ambitions. In the past decade, the concept has experienced increasing popularity in policy debates and academic discussions but has seen heterogeneous applications and little practical insigh…
The Australian wildfires from a systems dependency perspective
Wildfires are a normal occurrence in much of the world, with many fire adapted ecosystems and societies (Moritz et al 2014). However, a number of drivers appear to be increasing the fire risk and propensity for losses globally (Anon 2019). These drivers include global climate change which through heat and drying is increasing landscape flammability (Podur and Wotton 2010; IPCC 2019, Jones et al 2020). Exposure is being exacerbated through increas…
Loss and Damage and limits to adaptation
Recent evidence shows that climate change is leading to irreversible and existential impacts on vulnerable communities and countries across the globe. Among other effects, this has given rise to public debate and engagement around notions of climate crisis and emergency. The Loss and Damage (L&D) policy debate has emphasized these aspects over the last three decades. Yet, despite institutionalization through an article on L&D by the United Nation…
Finance for Loss and Damage
The climate policy discourse on Loss and Damage has been considering options for averting, minimizing and addressing critical and increasingly systemic climate-related risks in vulnerable countries. Research has started to identify possible finance sources and mechanisms, but stopped short of positioning those options along a comprehensive risk management framework in line with the whole scope of Loss&Damage. BuildingTaking a risk analytical pers…
A co-designed heuristic guide for investigating the peace-sustainability nexus in the context of global change
Quantifying community resilience to riverine hazards in Bangladesh
Every year, 30–70% of Bangladesh is inundated with flood waters, which combined with erosion, affect between 10 and 70 million people annually. Rural riverine communities in Bangladesh have long been identified as some of the poorest populations, most vulnerable to riverine hazards. However, these communities have, for generations, also developed resilience strategies – considered as the combination of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative app…
Environmental resource management (18 works) · Business (17 works) · Geography (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Economics (15 works) · Environmental Science (15 works) · Climate change (14 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (13 works) · Ecology (13 works) · Flood Risk Assessment and Management (12 works)