Dr. Michael Hagenlocher is an Associate Academic Officer in the Vulnerability Assessment, Risk Management & Adaptive Planning (VARMAP) and the Environmental Vulnerability & Ecosystem Services (EVES) sections of UNU-EHS. From April to December 2019, he acted as the ad-interim co-chair of the VARMAP section.
Dr. Hagenlocher has a broad interest in human-environmental interaction, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and community resilience. Much of his work focuses on developing novel concepts and methods for the assessment of drivers, hotspots and dynamics of vulnerability and risk associated with natural hazards at different scales, and the evaluation of risk reduction and adaptation options in the context of global change and sustainable development. At UNU-EHS, Dr. Hagenlocher currently manages multiple transdisciplinary research projects (e.g. ARIMA, FloodAdaptVN, GlobeDrought, InsuRisk), and is involved in several other projects in the field of vulnerability and risk research. He supports the institute in securing third-party funding, and supervises team members, visiting scientists, and master students.
Dr. Hagenlocher is actively involved in multiple teaching activities at UNU (e.g. at UNU-EHS, UNU-MERIT in Maastricht, NL) and the University of Bonn. He is the Deputy Head and a full member of the Academic Board of the Joint Master’s Programme “Geography of Environmental Risks and Human Security” with the University of Bonn, and also contributes to the “MSc in Global Health Risk Management & Hygiene Policies”.
He is involved in various networks such as the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF), the Index for Risk Management (INFORM initiative and network, the GIZ “Climate Risk” Community of Practice, and the Partnership for Environment and Disaster Risk Reduction (PEDRR). Currently, Dr. Hagenlocher serves as a Lead Author in both the UNDRR Global Assessment Report (GAR) “GAR Special Report on Drought (GAR SR)” and the EU flagship report “Science for Disaster Risk Management: acting today, protecting tomorrow” (Science for DRM 2020, Chapter 2.1).
Prior to joining UNU-EHS, Dr. Hagenlocher has worked as a researcher at the University of Salzburg’s Department of Geoinformatics (Z_GIS) in Austria, expert for UN-SPIDER, visiting scientist at Harvard University, and lecturer at the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Further, he did consultancy work for the European Commission (DG ECHO, DIPECHO), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the United Nations (UN Environment, UNDP).
Dr. Hagenlocher has received multiple awards for his research, including the the “Förderpreis Geoinformatik” by the Technische Universität München (Germany) for his PhD research in 2016, and the “Sustainability Award” for outstanding research in the field of sustainable development within the context of his MSc research by the University of Tuebingen (Germany) in 2011.
Dr. Hagenlocher is author/co-author of 60+ scientific publications, including 27 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as policy briefs, and op-eds. For more information please refer to his ResearchGate profile or Google Scholar profile.