The session series on “Natural Hazards’ impact on urban areas and infrastructure”

The series started as sessions on “Natural hazards impact on large cities and on infrastructure” 1999 within the European Geophysical Society XXIV General Assembly held in The Hague, The Netherlands. The series were continued as Session “Natural Hazards Impact on Urban Areas and Infrastructure” at the EGS XXV, XXVI and XXVII General Assemblies held in 2000–2002 in Nice (France). The session took place, after 1 year’s merger, in the frame of the European Geosciences Union General Assemblies held in 2004 in Nice (France) and 2005–2007 in Vienna (Austria). The authors’ description of Nice was 2nd runner-up for the conference locations competition of “Science Careers”. The format of the General Assemblies was providing only the publication of the abstracts of the contributions, and hence it was a constant effort of the author to assure the publication of the full papers from the session. After publishing isolated papers in the journal of the EGU, agreements have been concluded with Springer and two special issues resulted. In 2009, after 1 year’s break, a Splinter meeting was held to discuss the future of the session and its publications. After the session in 2010 papers were gathered to form a book on a the topic “Earthquake Hazard Impact and Urban Planning” in the Environmental Hazards Series of Springer. This paper presents the scope, statistics on the contributions to the session till 2010 and overviews on its organisation and publications, since also the scientific organisers and, in case of the author, the affiliation, changed in time.