Abstract
Climate change is increasing frequency and severity of natural hazards in mountains leading to a chain of impacts on the environment, the economy and society. Mountains are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to their high degree of specialization of both natural and human systems (e.g., glaciers, alpine species, valley population density). Despite the international consensus on this urgent issue, risks are usually assessed and managed in a siloed approach looking at simplified single-risk conditions or one sector per time. Without including a wider perspective able to address multi-risk conditions, assessments can lead to maladaptation or unintended consequences.
This ongoing lack calls for approaches to assess multi-risk in mountains considering complex future climate and anthropogenic scenarios and to identify effective adaptation strategies.
For this reason, this study investigates the complexity of multi-risk, its main characteristics in mountains (e.g., uncertainty, feedback loops, temporal variations) and the available methods able to address it. Among them, System Dynamics modelling (SDM) is identified for its ability to capture complex and counterintuitive conditions leading to severe impacts. Two SDM applications from the existing literature are here reported and analysed considering feedback loops in droughts. Moreover, SDM provides a wider perspective on complex systems supporting the identification of entry points for adaptation. SDM shows a high potential for applications and methodological improvement within the multi-risk contexts of climate change in order to support decision-makers in mountains to prepare for future climate scenarios.