A variety of natural extreme events, including earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, river floods, winter storms, wildfires and coastal phenomena, threaten different regions of Europe. This leads to populations suffering losses not only from individual hazards, but also from multiple events that occur in combination.

In both their occurrence and their consequences, different hazards are often causally related. Classes of interaction include triggered events, cascade effects and the rapid increase in vulnerability during successive hazards. Effective and efficient risk reduction, therefore, often needs to rest on a location-based synoptic view.

Planners and policy-makers, and the scientists who inform their judgements, usually treat the hazards and risks related to such events separately from each other, neglecting interdependencies between the different types of phenomena, as well as the importance of risk comparability. Resolving this deficit will improve their ability to take risk reduction measures in a cost-effective way and in doing so, strengthen societies' resilience to natural disasters.

The MATRIX project started in October 2010 and it lasted 3 years.