Dr. Michael Bruendl is a geographer from the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and holds a Ph.D. on snow hydrology from ETH Zurich. For over 20 years he is working in the field of risk management of natural hazards with a focus on risk assessment, early warning systems, and cost-benefit-analysis of mitigation measures. He was leading the event analyses of the avalanche winters in 1999 and 2018 and the follow-up project “Intercantonal Warning and Crisis Information System IFKIS”; he contributed to the development of the Swiss National Strategy Natural Hazards, was editor of the Guideline Risk Concept for Natural Hazards in Switzerland and project leader of the project “EconoMe – evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of mitigation measures against natural hazards”. Currently, he is head of the WSL research program “Climate Change Impacts on Alpine Mass Movements” and the research group “Avalanche Dynamics and Risk Management”.