Study region

Trelleborg is a mid-sized coastal municipality in southern Sweden that has experienced repeated pluvial flooding in recent decades. The city comprises areas served by both combined and separate sewer systems and is increasingly exposed to intense short-duration rainfall events. This study uses 17 years (2006–2023) of property-level flood reports, in situ rainfall observations from multiple local gauges, and detailed information on sewer system configuration and property type.

Study focus

The study investigates how rainfall characteristics and urban infrastructure are associated with flood frequency and recurrence at the property level. Flood reports were linked to rainfall event characteristics and analysed using non-parametric statistical tests and tree-based models, including Poisson regression and classification trees. Rainfall intensities across multiple durations were evaluated to identify relevant temporal scales, while infrastructure and property characteristics were assessed as influencing factors.

New hydrological insights

Short-duration rainfall intensity, particularly at the 60-minute scale, is more strongly associated with flood frequency and recurrence than total rainfall volume. Higher 60-minute intensities are linked to increased numbers of reported cases and a greater likelihood of repeated flooding at affected properties. Flooding was observed across a wide range of rainfall conditions, including events below nominal design thresholds, indicating that moderate rainfall can still result in substantial impacts. The results further show that flood recurrence is influenced by interactions between rainfall intensity and property characteristics. These findings provide empirical evidence on rainfall–infrastructure interactions in Trelleborg and support improved urban drainage assessment and adaptation planning.

The 2025 California wildfires revealed persistent gaps in translating well-established knowledge of wildfire risk reduction into effective land-use planning, building practices, and community preparedness. Drawing on the widely discussed case of a wildfire-surviving residential building in Pacific Palisades, this paper examines four interrelated constraints on community resilience that are consistently observed across diverse hazards: limited stakeholder awareness and risk perception; inadequate capacity at both household and institutional levels; weak incentives for proactive adaptation; and governance barriers, including regulatory fragmentation, unclear accountabilities, and insufficient integration of risk into policy frameworks. Prompted by the 2025 California wildfires, this paper examines these gaps in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and highlights how social, economic, and political dynamics interact with these constraints to perpetuate exposure in hazard-prone areas. Examples from other recent disastrous events, such as the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, the 2024 Valencia floods, and the 2025 Texas floods, illustrate that these challenges are common across diverse hazards and contexts, underscoring the need for more integrated, participatory, and context-sensitive approaches. Strengthening institutional capacity, aligning incentives with risk, and fostering awareness and engagement are essential to support adaptive, equitable, and sustainable resilience strategies capable of addressing both single and multi-hazards.

The concept of integrated risk management (IRM) has developed as a response to more interconnected and complex contexts. To investigate how the concept is used and what is meant with integration in the scientific literature, a research profiling was carried out across all kinds of risk management applications. 1094 publications from scientific journals, conference proceedings, and books were included. The study period of 21 years showed a steady increase in the use of IRM, especially for risk management in the private sector and for natural hazard risks. 634 of the publications were published in 331 different journals, representing a large range of scientific disciplines. Only 30 % of the publications were connected by internal referencing. 86 different specific risks were identified and clustered into seven risk clusters. Two major types of integration were identified: firstly, of different aspects of the risk itself or within the risk management process, and secondly, between the risk management process and a wider context of other objectives and processes related to business, society, or ecosystems. The integration of natural hazard risks mainly was in relation to societal processes and ecosystems, whereas integration of businessrelated risks took place mainly within the business sector. Overall, the literature on IRM is fragmented, with a few exceptions where discourses have developed around certain risks like flood risk and enterprise risk. The development of a more general understanding of integration across different fields of risk management would benefit analyses and decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world.

In recent years severe droughts have significantly impacted the water-dependent sectors including water supply, agriculture, energy, and forestry. This study aims to assess the meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological drought risk in Sweden, with a focus on hazard assessment using a set of indicators, including the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSMI), and Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI). The indicators were computed at time scales of 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months using daily precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and streamflow simulations (1975-2021) from the national S-HYPE hydrological model at about 13 km2 spatial resolution for almost 40 000 sub-catchments. Dry periods were next identified and characterized based on their intensity, duration, and frequency, following this a trend analysis was performed for these indicators and periods. Assessing the spatial similarities in soil moisture anomaly led to the categorization of the Swedish river systems into five clusters further improving the understanding of the identified spatial variability of drought indicators and trends. Our findings showed drier conditions and an increasing frequency of dry periods in central- and south-eastern Sweden. Significant negative trends in these regions, along with increasingly wet conditions in northern and western Sweden, were observed when analysed using the SPEI, SSMI, and SSI. Based solely on precipitation (SPI), similar significant wetter conditions were observed in northern and western Sweden; however, no significant decreasing precipitation trends were found in parts of central-eastern Sweden and Gotland Island. The findings of this study can improve climate services and early warning systems of droughts, better understanding the link to sectoral impacts and guiding mitigation practices and adaptation policies.

Väder är något som engagerar många människor, så också i Sverige. I takt med de klimatförändringarsom pågår ökar intresset från SMHI och andra aktörer att kunna ta del av privatpersonersobservationer om väder. Den stora potentialen ligger i att kunna få en bättre rumslig upplösning pådata om temperatur, nederbörd och andra väderfaktorer.

Syftet med denna intervjustudie, som är en del av SPARC-projektet, är att undersöka vad sommotiverar människor att observera och dokumentera väder, och i vilken omfattning de också delarmed sig av sina observationer. Ett flertal olika former av väderobservationer och dokumentation harinkluderats i studien.

Mellan den 23/9–2024 och den 14/4–2025 genomfördes 13 semi-strukturerade intervjuer med totalt14 respondenter. Intervjuernas längd varierade mellan ca 45–60 minuter. Upplägget vid samtligaintervjuer var detsamma där en av författarna började med att ställa frågor från en framtagenintervjuguide, utvecklad med en induktiv ansats, och därefter följde båda författarna upp meduppföljningsfrågor där det upplevdes som nödvändigt.

Samtliga intervjuer spelades in och kommer under sommaren 2025 att transkriberas och underhösten/vintern 2025 kommer en tematisk analys att genomföras av transkriberade data.

Utifrån anteckningar, och diskussioner författarna emellan, kan några övergripande resultat redan nuutskiljas. Rent generellt framkommer det i intervjuerna att respondenterna uttrycker att vädret ärviktigt att observera, men att motiven kan variera.

Väderobservationer genomförda av respondenterna har dock främst handlat om att observeratemperatur och nederbörd. Siffror som sådana intresserar respondenter vilket framträder i flera intervjuer.

Hur och vilken omfattning respondenterna har dokumenterat genomförda väderobservation skiljersig mellan respondenterna. Till exempel har några respondenter, till stöd för temperatur ochnederbörd, gjort anteckningar om vädret som helhet och om det varit något specifikt som hänt en dagvilket kan påminna om en dagbok. Andra respondenter har istället mycket kort noterat väderdata förgenomförda väderobservationer.

Avslutningsvis, beträffande att dela dokumenterade väderobservationer kan vi från intervjuernasummera att det förekommer men den är av ganska låg grad. Ofta utrycker respondenterna att deinte har något emot att dela dokumenterade väderobservationer men att det inte är det som främstdriver dem att genomföra och dokumentera väderobservationer.

A plethora of methods exist to aid decision-making in mitigating disaster risk, many of which fall into the categories of risk, vulnerability and/or resilience assessment methods. The objective of the present study is to provide an overview of these methods, with a particular focus on evidence that supports their practical implementation. A scoping study of scientific literature reveal 97 distinct methods. Despite the growing interest in publishing new methods, there seems to be a lack of focus on demonstrating their effectiveness in practice. The few contributions that do include some forms of evaluation typically do so by comparing the method’s output with disaster data, by contrasting it with the output of other methods, by having experts evaluate the structure of the method, or by testing the method in practice and evaluating its usage. To further strengthen the relevance of research on this topic, increased attention should be paid to this matter. A good starting point would be to use the ways of evaluation identified in this study and systematically present evidence regarding the practical usefulness of methods for risk, vulnerability and/or resilience assessment. 

Accurate population data is crucial for assessing exposure in disaster risk assessments. In recent years,there has been a signifcant increase in the development of spatially gridded population datasets.Despite these datasets often using similar input data to derive population fgures, notable diferencesarise when comparing them with direct ground-level observations. This study evaluates the precisionand accuracy of food exposure assessments using both known and generated gridded populationdatasets in Sweden. Specifcally focusing on WorldPop and GHSPop, we compare these datasetsagainst ofcial national statistics at a 100 m grid cell resolution to assess their reliability in foodexposure analyses. Our objectives include quantifying the reliability of these datasets and examiningthe impact of data aggregation on estimated food exposure across diferent administrative levels.The analysis reveals signifcant discrepancies in food exposure estimates, underscoring the challengesassociated with relying on generated gridded population data for precise food risk assessments.Our fndings emphasize the importance of careful dataset selection and highlight the potential foroverestimation in food risk analysis. This emphasises the critical need for validations against groundpopulation data to ensure accurate food risk management strategies.

The concept of risk remains a key aspect in the recently published 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC risk diagram shows risk as a function of three elements: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. While this relationship is undisputed, simply superimposing the individual risk factors as presented in the IPCC diagram does not do justice to the underlying definitions of the terms. This diagram can thus confuse more than it clarifies and, we argue, should be reconsidered.