How Can We Redefine Natural Hazards Through Societal and Health Responses?

Kelley De Polt

In this video, KELLEY DE POLT argues for a more integrated understanding of natural hazards by linking extreme heat events with societal interest and public health impacts. Focusing on Germany, she uses climate data, media trends, and health records to identify the duration of heatwaves that trigger the strongest societal responses. Her work highlights the need to move beyond hazard-only definitions and adopt a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to risk.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101203

Researcher

Kelley De Polt is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she is part of the Water and Climate Risk program. Her work focuses on compound climate extremes, particularly the interactions between drought and heatwaves, and their socio-environmental impacts. She holds a Master’s in Geography from East Carolina University and a Bachelor’s in Meteorology from North Carolina State University, with additional training in GIS and computer programming. Prior to her PhD, she contributed to climate risk research at NCICS and the State Climate Office of North Carolina.

Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

The research is dedicated to the study of global biogeochemical cycles and their long-term interactions with the biosphere, the atmosphere, the geosphere and the entire climate system. We want to better understand how living organisms - including humans - exchange basic resources such as water, carbon, nitrogen and energy with their environment and how this affects global climate and ecosystems. Biogeochemistry is the science of the Earth's metabolism. Elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus are constantly undergoing biological, chemical and physical transformations as they are exchanged between different parts of the Earth, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. The "biogeochemical cycles" quantitatively describe the distribution and exchange of elements between these components of the Earth system.