STORIES has officially started on April 01, 2023! A kickoff meeting was held in hybrid mode on April 06, 2023, where all the project members in Munich, Chengdu and Kunming participated.

Dr. Emlyn Yang at Munich, as the PI and group leader, chaired the meeting with a warm welcome to all. At the beginning of the meeting, all participants first introduced themselves to the group. Then Emlyn presented an overview and general plans of research activities in the STORIES project.

A main activity in the meeting agenda is to plan and prepare for the first fieldwork campaign in summer 2023 that are coopertively supported by the two local partners in China. Prof. Yiping Fang at the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment (IMHE), Chinese Academy of Sciences first introduced his team and their plan of fieldwork and household surveys in Sichuang province. He presented suggestions of survey sites and routes as well as a brief schedule for going to Ya‘An and Liangshan regions. Associate Professor Junxu Chen from Yunnan University (YNU) also introduced his team for the project and the overall arrangement of the surveys in Yunnan province. The Master student Mr. Yao Gao at Yunnan University talked about more details on the historical flood sites in Dali and Lijiang areas and proposed appropriate sites for surveying flood resilience situations.

There were then extensive discussions about the plans, covering issues of questionnaire design, survey sites, training of surveyers, routes and schedules, as well as the participation of German team members. In the end, it was agreed that the fieldwork campaign will start in August 2023 with participants from LMU Munich. While the IMHE and YNU teams will continute to finish the surveys in September and October 2023.

Some long-term cooperation issues such as people exchange, joint workshops and publications were also rised in the meeting. s