Our Department Head Prof. Hannes Taubenböck was honored to welcome Prof. Alejandra Stehr from the Universidad de Concepción and Prof. Rodrigo Cienfuegos from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile at the Earth Observation Center (EOC) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen from 9 to 11 June 2026.

There has been a long-standing collaboration with Prof. Cienfuegos since the founding of CIGIDEN in 2012. CIGIDEN is the Center of Excellence for disaster risk reduction funded by ANID. In January 2026, the center secured funding for a new 5+5-year cycle recognizing its scientific excellence and impact. CIGIDEN R+ is dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary research and innovation in disaster risk, resilience and recovery. Over the past few days, a series of discussions were held with various colleagues, with Dr. Torsten Riedlinger and Dr. Elisabeth Schoepfer as the main points of contact and facilitators of the Chile cooperation.

Prof. Stehr and Prof. Cienfuegos also gave an inspiring talk at the GZS-seminar series titled “Climate-driven hazards in Chile and its compound downstream effects. New challenges for the CIGIDEN R+ ANID Excellence Research Center”.

Topics such as natural hazards like wildfires and floods, urban analysis, and climate change impacts are of shared interest for Chile and Germany which are being followed up through ongoing and future joint activities.

For past collaborations, please see e.g. here:

• A jointly edited Special Issue in the ‘Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences’ journal titled ‘Multi-risk assessment in the Andes region’. https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/special_issue1172.html
• RIESGOS project website: https://www.riesgos.de/en/