Tomorrow’s risk is being built today. We must therefore move away from risk assessments that show risk at a single point in the present and move instead towards risk assessments that can guide decision makers towards a resilient future. – Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (2016)

But how can we do this? What decisions can we make today that will reduce the future risk of natural hazards, especially in a time of climate change? As an example, let’s take Adelaide, the South Australian capital, which is home to about 1.3 million people. We modelled five different plausible futures for greater Adelaide to explore the impacts of different risk-reduction strategies.