Conference: Compounding and Cascading Climate Risks to US Frontline Communities; Portland, Oregon; Spring 2025

This award provides support for a conference that will bring together a wide range of attendees to discuss compound weather and climate hazards. Compound hazards refer to the occurrence of back-to-back or coincidental extreme events, such as multiple hurricane landfalls affecting the same region in quick succession. This conference will include scientists and community stakeholders with the end goal of providing community-level guidance on where and how best to focus research attention to comprehensively characterize societal risks from changing climate hazards.

The conference will take place in spring 2025 on the campus of Portland State University in Oregon. The number of participants is estimated to be 75-100, including physical and social scientists, and stakeholders such as city planners and emergency managers. The conference themes are focused on coastal, island, rural, and urban communities.

The participants will discuss the combined impacts of flooding, tropical cyclones, droughts, wildfires, heat, air quality and more. The conference will foster potential future interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaborations to advance fundamental knowledge of compounding and cascading hazards and identify solutions to minimize risks to various front-line communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.