Towards the Development of an Adapted Multi-hazard Risk Assessment Framework for the West Sudanian Savanna Zone

West Africa is a region considered highly vulnerable to climate change and associated with natural hazards due to interactions of climate change and non - climatic stressors exacerbating the vulnerability of the region, particularly its agricultural system ( IPCC, 2014b). Taking the Western Sudanian Savanna as our geographic target area, this paper seeks to develop an integrated risk assessment framework that incorporates resilience as well as multiple hazards concepts, and is applicable to the specific condit ions of the target area. To provide the scientific basis for the framework, the paper will first defi ne the following key terms of risk assessments in a climate change adaptation context: risk, hazard, exposure, vulnerability, resilience, coping and adapt ation. Next, it will discuss the ways in which they are conceptualized and employed in risk, resilience and vulnerability frameworks. When reviewing the literature on existing indicator - based risk assessment for West African Sudanian Savanna zones, it bec omes apparent that there is a lack of a systematic and comprehensive risk assessment capturing multiple natural hazards. The paper suggests an approach for l inking resilience and vulnerability in a common framework for risk assessment. It accounts for soci etal response mechanism through coping, adaptation, disaster risk management and development activities which may foster transformation or persistence of the social ecological systems. Building on the progress made in multi - hazard assessments, the framewor k is suitable for analyzing multiple - hazard risks and existing interactions at hazard and vulnerability levels. While the framework is well grounded in theories and existing literature, and advances the knowledge by including and linking additional element s, it still remains to be tested empiricall