A natural disaster takes place when society meets a natural hazard, e.g., flood, cyclone, or landslide. A disaster often incurs huge financial, environmental, and human losses that often depend on social position, age, or gender.

The challenge to predict, mitigate, or prevent the disaster requires a combined research effort of social, earth, and engineering sciences.

This programme brings together five leading research units at Uppsala University, Karlstad University, and the National Defence College to a novel, cross-cutting Centre for Natural-Disaster Science (CNDS).

A new Swedish research school named SENDIM (Swedish Natural Disaster Mitigation) will be started. Some funding will go to establish CNDS as an umbrella over the new school and the existing Sida-funded research school for Central American Natural Disaster Mitigation (CANDIM).

CNDS will achieve an efficient cross-disciplinary collaboration by combining six problem-oriented work packages with three world-leading disciplinary areas of strength.

The staggering costs for humans, society and economy make natural-disaster science of utmost strategic importance. The societal importance also means good business opportunities.

The triple-helix model for collaboration between academia, cutting-edge corporate actors, and government agencies will be used to rapidly market CNDS research results.

Our goal is to establish CNDS as one of the world´s most respected centres for natural-disaster science.