A new chair for mountain hazard research
Climate change is rapidly escalating disaster risks in the Alps. Melting glaciers, shrinking snow cover and thawing permafrost are destabilising mountains, triggering more rockfalls, debris flows and cascading hazards that threaten communities and infrastructure. At the same time, hotter summers and more intense storms are fuelling sudden, high-impact events such as floods. To tackle these growing risks, the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has launched a new chair, supported by the AXA Foundation for Human Progress, to study changes in mountain disaster risks.
The new UNIGE AXA Chair in Mountain Disaster Risks will examine how climate warming, changing precipitation patterns, glacier retreat, and permafrost degradation influence the frequency, magnitude, and impacts of different types of gravitational natural hazards in mountain regions. It will provide a comprehensive approach to quantify and evaluate future mass-movement risks and help define strategies, together with public and private actors, to limit loss and damage in the future.
Held by UNIGE professor Markus Stoffel, a specialist in climate related risks, the chair will build on two decades of experience and combine field observations, remote sensing and process modelling to better understand where and when slopes fail, how far destructive flows can travel, and what this means for exposed communities and critical infrastructure. It will be developed in collaboration with the Department F.-A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences, the Department of Earth Sciences and the Institute for Environmental Sciences (ISE).
"The new chair will offer a unique opportunity to study the impact of changing climatic conditions on mass-movement risks in the European Alps. The rock-ice avalanche in Blatten last year or the fatal debris flows in summer 2024 underscore the pressing need to improve understanding of these processes and their dynamics. While we won’t be able to avoid the occurrence of these phenomena in the future, we can certainly mitigate the resulting damage", says Markus Stoffel.
On 3 September 2026, the team of the new UNIGE AXA Chair on Mountain Disaster Risks invites media representatives to a field visit in the Zermatt Valley, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, to observe firsthand the effects of climate change on natural hazards in mountain environments. If you wish to participate or receive further information, please contact . If you would like to know more about the new chair, you can read the full article published on the UNIGE Media webpage, and the Journal de l'UNIGE.