Geo-information and remote sensing are proper tools to enhance functional strategies for increasing awareness on natural hazard prevention and for supporting research and operational activities devoted to disaster reduction. An improved earth sciences knowledge coupled with geomatics advanced technologies is here proposed with the goal of reducing human, social, economic, and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related disasters. Research activities lead to the collection and evaluation of data from: global and national literature for the definition of predisposing/triggering factors and evolutionary processes of natural instability phenomena (landslides, floods, storms…) and for the analysis of statistical methods for the prediction of natural disasters; local and regional historical, geological, geomorphological studies of mountain territories of Europe and Developing Countries. Geodatabases, remote sensing, and mobile geographic information systems (GIS) applications were developed to perform analysis of: (1) large, climate-related disaster (Hurricane Mitch, Central America; Zambesi Flood, Mozambique), either for early warning or mitigation measures at the national and international scale; (2) distribution on slope instabilities at the regional scale (Landslide Inventory in the Aosta Valley, NW Italy), to activate prevention and recovering measures; (3) geological and geomorphological controlling factors of seismicity, to provide microzonation maps and scenarios for coseismic response of instable zones (Dronero, NW Italian Alps); (4) earthquake effects on ground and infrastructures, in order to register early assessment for awareness situations and for compile damage inventories (2000, 2001, and 2003 AstiAlessandria seismic events). The research results has been able to substantiate early impact models by structuring geodatabases on natural disasters and to support humanitarian relief and disaster management activities by creating and testing SRG2, a mobile GIS application for field-data collection on natural hazards and risks.

For the past four years, we have been tracking the British, French and Italian press to examine the genesis and establishment of a new weather term: the ‘water bomb’ or ‘bomba d'acqua’ in Italian. The term has, today, become established in Italy to describe a cloudburst (‘nubifragio’ in Italian) that is newsworthy. That is, the cloud bursts to produce heavy rain over a populated area within the newspaper catchment to cause localised damage. The term became well established during the stormy and damaging summer of 2014 in Italy, being used 54 times across 64 Italian newspapers over the period of analysis (13 July–16 August 2014). The establishment of the term is interesting, and it shows how terminology can be introduced by the media, without regard for existing terms that are already appropriate. It can also cause confusion due to direct conflict with well‐established terms for the same phenomena or with terms that use the same syntax, such as ‘weather bomb’, but which are used for entirely different phenomena.

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