Oral presentation: Iris Keizer

Caribbean islands are exposed to a wide range of weather, climates and seismic hazards, including hurricanes, extreme rainfall, heat, rising sea levels, earthquakes and tsunamis. The interaction of these hazards and their associated impacts can lead to amplified risks through compound and cascading effects. Therefore, understanding such multi-hazard dynamics is essential for effective disaster risk reduction and climate planning.

The EU-funded PARATUS project addresses this challenge by developing tools to support stakeholders in managing compound disasters (https://www.paratus-project.eu/). Within the Caribbean case study, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) is contributing its expertise on climate and seismic hazards. The KNMI develops climate change scenarios, investigates future changes in hurricane intensity and assesses regional seismic hazards.

The KNMI has developed extranet platforms to support the timely and effective relay of meteorological and geophysical warning information to professional stakeholders. This represents an important step forward in strengthening risk preparedness and environmental monitoring for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba. The current extranet for these islands combines multiple hazard domains within a single interface, displaying tropical storm warnings, weather forecasts and warnings and seismic events.