Possibilities and Limitations of Interdisciplinary, User-oriented Research: Experiences from the German Research Network Natural Disasters

The German Research Network for Natural Disasters (DFNK) linked 15 partners with scientific expertise in the field of natural hazards. Main objectives were the development and provision of the scientific fundamentals for an advanced risk management of important natural disasters in Germany, i.e., floods, earthquakes, storms and wildland fires. This included risk analyses, the development of information systems for supporting disaster management, and recommendations for risk reduction measures. This paper gives an overview of DFNK and summarises its experiences concerning multidisciplinarity and user-orientation. It illustrates the concept of risk chains, causally linking the different processes from hazard to risk. The step from hazard to risk requires interdisciplinary research teams. The experiences show that integrative concepts allow results not achievable with mono-disciplinary approaches. Integrative approaches pave the way to harmonised safety considerations taking into account the different hazards in a region within a common framework. User-orientation, policy advice and development of operational tools are key issues of disaster research. The experiences of DFNK illustrate the limitations of a research network in bridging the gap between research and application within rather short-term projects. Successful cooperation with users could be established by those activities where, at the beginning of the project, a user was identified who had a strong interest in solving an urgent problem.     

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in the Nepal Himalaya: A Manageable Hazard?

Within the past fifteen years, glacial lake outburst floods have become an activetopic of discussion within the development community focused on Nepal. Suchfloods endanger thousands of people, hundreds of villages, and basic infrastructuresuch as trails and bridges. The flood risk is also a major impediment to hydroelectricdevelopment in several river basins. Unlike most other mountain hazards in Nepal,reducing the possibility of outburst floods is technically feasible. The first attemptwithin Nepal to reduce the hazard of one lake by artificially lowering its water levelwas partially completed in June 2000. Completing this task and beginning work onother hazardous lakes will require difficult decisions about risk by downstream residentsand substantial investment from the international aid community.     

Participatory modelling of vulnerability and adaptive capacity in flood risk management

Being part of the EU-project NeWater on adaptive water resources management, the Ukrainian Tisa river basin is presented as an example for a participatory study dealing with flood risk, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. The Tisa valley is regularly and increasingly faced with hazardous floods at very limited local budgets and high poverty rates. In order to make flood risk management more resilient and better adapted to climate change, scientists and stakeholders applied a set of qualitative and quantitative modelling approaches to characterise prevailing flood risk management, to discover respective vulnerabilities and to identify barriers and options of adaptive capacity. The former were found in the defensive mentality paradigm and the inert and hierarchical structure of present institutions, the latter in, firstly, an enormous potential to link the knowledge of different stakeholders in the region, secondly, a better integration of the individual flood preparedness of households and thirdly, the active involvement of the Church as institution in local flood risk management.     

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley as a risk area

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley, granted the status of a World Heritage site, is well known for its unique inner narrow valley of Quaternary age with its historical legacy of numerous medieval castles and old towns. Less known is that this has always been a risk area of floods and gravitative mass movements. Up to the recent past, mainly ice floods caused enormous damage. The inhabitants of the valley were well aware that they lived in a risk area, but they had learned to handle the flood hazard. With the demise of ice floods over the last 40 years, due to climate change and because of the additional heating of the river water by power plants, the awareness of flood hazards has been much diminished, in contrast to that of potential damage by rockfalls and landslides which were also much feared in the past, though at the local level only. Still in the people’s memory is the Kaub catastrophe of March 10, 1876, when 28 persons were killed by a landslide. Nowadays, even minor rockfalls are a major threat, as they will affect the much-used traffic lines on both banks of the river, in particular the railroads. Therefore, since 2002, on behalf of German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB), all problematic slopes have been protected by costly steel-ring nets, although they are an aesthetic problem by UNESCO standards. The feeling of absolute safety created among the public is only subjective, though, as planners are well aware of. Moreover, the impact of modern climate change on slope stability is nearly unknown. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop a risk map for the narrow valley, with emphasis on gravitational hazards.     

Morphometric analysis and flash floods of Wadi Sudr and Wadi Wardan, Gulf of Suez, Egypt: using digital elevation model

Application of geographic information systems and remote sensing are a powerful tool for the assessment of risk and management of flood hazards. By using these techniques to extract new drainage network with more details to prepare natural hazard maps which may help decision makers and planners to put suitable solutions reducing the impact of these hazards. Ras Sudr city and surrounding area had been attacked by flash floods of Wadi Sudr and Wadi Wardan which are nearly perpendicular to the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez, Egypt, and many infrastructures had destroyed. GIS techniques and remote sensing are used to find the interrelation between the morphometric parameters by using statistical correlation to determine the area under varying flood conditions. The results of morphometric parameters and the new data of last flood which occurred on 17-18th January 2010 indicate that the two basins are threatened by the risk of flash floods and Wadi Wardan is more risky than Wadi Sudr.     

Hydrological hazards in Russia: origin,classification, changes and risk assessment

Hydrological extreme events pose an imminent risk to society and economics. In this paper, various aspects of hydrological hazards in Russia are analysed at different scales of risk assessment. It is shown that the number of hydrological and meteorological hazards in Russia has been growing every year. The frequency of economic losses associated with extreme low flow in this century has increased by factor five compared to the last decade of the previous century. With regard to floods, an interesting spatial patter can be observed. On the one hand, the number of floods in the Asian part of the country has increased, whereas on the other hand, the number and intensity of floods in estuarine areas in the European part of Russia have significantly reduced since the middle of the twentieth century, especially in the 2000s. This decrease can be attributed to runoff flooding in the mouths of regulated rivers, with an effective system of flood and ice jam protection. The analysis shows that there is an 8–12-year periodicity in the number of flood occurrences and that flood surges have intensified over the last 110 years, especially on the European territory of Russia. An integrated index that accounts for flood hazards and socio-economic vulnerability was calculated for each region of Russia. A classification of flood risk was also developed, taking into account more than 20 hydrological and social–economic characteristics. Based on these characteristics, hazard and vulnerability maps for entire Russia were generated which can be used for water management and the development of future water resources plans.

     

Spatially distributed rainfall information and its potential for regional landslide early warning systems

Hydrological extreme events pose an imminent risk to society and economics. In this paper, various aspects of hydrological hazards in Russia are analysed at different scales of risk assessment. It is shown that the number of hydrological and meteorological hazards in Russia has been growing every year. The frequency of economic losses associated with extreme low flow in this century has increased by factor five compared to the last decade of the previous century. With regard to floods, an interesting spatial patter can be observed. On the one hand, the number of floods in the Asian part of the country has increased, whereas on the other hand, the number and intensity of floods in estuarine areas in the European part of Russia have significantly reduced since the middle of the twentieth century, especially in the 2000s. This decrease can be attributed to runoff flooding in the mouths of regulated rivers, with an effective system of flood and ice jam protection. The analysis shows that there is an 8–12-year periodicity in the number of flood occurrences and that flood surges have intensified over the last 110 years, especially on the European territory of Russia. An integrated index that accounts for flood hazards and socio-economic vulnerability was calculated for each region of Russia. A classification of flood risk was also developed, taking into account more than 20 hydrological and social–economic characteristics. Based on these characteristics, hazard and vulnerability maps for entire Russia were generated which can be used for water management and the development of future water resources plans.     

基于非对称Archimedean Copula的三变量洪水风险评估

分析洪峰、洪量和历时三变量联合分布与风险概率及其设计分位数,为水利工程规划设计和风险评估提供参考依据。以珠江流域西江高要站52年洪水数据为例,采用非对称阿基米德M6 Copula函数与Kendall分布函数计算三变量洪水联合分布的“或”重现期、“且”重现期和二次重现期及其最可能的设计分位数。结果表明:“或”重现期的风险率偏高,“且”重现期的风险率偏低,二次重现期更准确地反映了特定设计频率情况下三变量洪水要素遭遇的风险率;按三变量“或”重现期或三变量同频率设计值推算的洪水设计值偏高,以最大可能概率推算的三变量洪水要素的二次重现期设计值可为防洪工程安全与风险管理提供新的选择。     

Multi-hazard susceptibility mapping based on Convolutional Neural Networks

Multi-hazard susceptibility prediction is an important component of disasters risk management plan. An effective multi-hazard risk mitigation strategy includes assessing individual hazards as well as their interactions. However, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, multi-hazard susceptibility prediction techniques based on machine learning has encountered a huge bottleneck. In order to effectively solve this problem, this study proposes a multi-hazard susceptibility mapping framework using the classical deep learning algorithm of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). First, we use historical flash flood, debris flow and landslide locations based on Google Earth images, extensive field surveys, topography, hydrology, and environmental data sets to train and validate the proposed CNN method. Next, the proposed CNN method is assessed in comparison to conventional logistic regression and k-nearest neighbor methods using several objective criteria, i.e., coefficient of determination, overall accuracy, mean absolute error and the root mean square error. Experimental results show that the CNN method outperforms the conventional machine learning algorithms in predicting probability of flash floods, debris flows and landslides. Finally, the susceptibility maps of the three hazards based on CNN are combined to create a multi-hazard susceptibility map. It can be observed from the map that 62.43% of the study area are prone to hazards, while 37.57% of the study area are harmless. In hazard-prone areas, 16.14%, 4.94% and 30.66% of the study area are susceptible to flash floods, debris flows and landslides, respectively. In terms of concurrent hazards, 0.28%, 7.11% and 3.13% of the study area are susceptible to the joint occurrence of flash floods and debris flow, debris flow and landslides, and flash floods and landslides, respectively, whereas, 0.18% of the study area is subject to all the three hazards. The results of this study can benefit engineers, disaster managers and local government officials involved in sustainable land management and disaster risk mitigation.     

Reconstruction and post-event analysis of a flash flood in a small ungauged basin: a case study in Slovak territory

Flash floods are one of the major natural hazards occurring in small streams with a negative effect on the country as well as on human lives. Heavy rainfall occurred on July 20, 2014 and July 21, 2014 and caused severe surface water flooding and a flash flood in the Malá Fatra National Park (Slovakia). The most affected was Vrátna Valley with the Varínka stream. This study presents a reconstruction and post-event analysis of a flash flood on small ungauged basin located in this protected area of Slovakia. The reconstruction included hydraulic terrain measurements on estimating the flood’s culmination and documenting the flood’s development. The measurements were taken at three cross sections of the Varínka stream. This paper is focused mainly on post-event analysis of the Varínka stream in two profiles: Strá?a (gauged profile) and Tiesňavy (ungauged cross section). Subsequently, the extremeness of the flash flood was preliminary evaluated. Results of the post-event analysis showed that the July 2014 flood was not the highest flood in this area despite its catastrophic consequences. By studying historical materials, we came to the conclusion that in the past (e.g. in 1848 or 1939) some devastating floods in this area had occurred, which had disastrous consequences for the population. The second part of the study is focused on comparing this flash flood with three major floods which have occurred in Slovak territory since 1998. The first flood occurred on the 20th of July, 1998 on the Malá Svinka stream, and the two others are floods which occurred on the 7th of June, 2011 in the Small Carpathian Mountains: on the Gidra stream in Píla village and on the Parná stream in Horné Ore?any village. Such comparison of flash floods from different geographical regions and different rainfall events can provide comprehensive information about their regimes, threats and disastrous effects.     

Flash flood risk estimation along the St. Katherine road,southern Sinai,Egypt using GIS based morphometry and satellite imagery

Flash floods are considered to be one of the worst weather-related natural disasters. They are dangerous because they are sudden and are highly unpredictable following brief spells of heavy rain. Several qualitative methods exist in the literature for the estimations of the risk level of flash flood hazard within a watershed. This paper presents the utilization of remote sensing data such as enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), coupled with geological, geomorphological, and field data in a GIS environment for the estimation of the flash flood risk along the Feiran–Katherine road, southern Sinai, Egypt. This road is a vital corridor for the tourists visiting here for religious purposes (St. Katherine monastery) and is subjected to frequent flash floods, causing heavy damage to man-made features. In this paper, morphometric analyses have been used to estimate the flash flood risk levels of sub-watersheds within the Wadi Feiran basin. First, drainage characteristics are captured by a set of parameters relevant to the flash flood risk. Further, comparison between the effectiveness of the sub-basins has been performed in order to understand the active ones. A detailed geomorphological map for the most hazardous sub-basins is presented. In addition, a map identifying sensitive sections is constructed for the Feiran–Katherine road. Finally, the most influenced factors for both flash flood hazard and critical sensitive zones have been discussed. The results of this study can initiate appropriate measures to mitigate the probable hazards in the area.     

Global snowmelt flood disasters and their impact from 1900 to 2020北大核心CSCD

Under the background of climate warming, the occurrence time, frequency, intensity, and impact of snowmelt flood disasters have changed significantly. Thus, establishing a global snowmelt flood disaster database is particularly important for disaster risk management. With the help of a web crawler, and based on multiple data sources such as natural disaster databases, documents, books, government agency websites, and news media, this study collected relevant information of snowmelt floods and mixed floods and established standards for identifying snowmelt flood events and their disaster impacts based on data from the different sources. Following the screening, sorting, fusion, and integration of snowmelt flood events, a global snowmelt flood disaster dataset containing 579 pieces of data with strong pertinence and reliability was constructed. The temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of global snowmelt flood disasters from 1900 to 2020 were preliminarily analyzed. The results showed that the snowmelt floods were mainly distributed between 30° N and 60° N, with more mixed floods south of 50° N and more snowmelt floods north of 50° N. Spring was the period of highest incidence of snowmelt flood disasters, followed by winter, summer, and autumn, respectively. The snowmelt floods that occurred in spring, autumn, and winter were mainly at 40°~50° N, and the snowmelt floods that occurred in summer were mainly at 30°~40° N. Compared with the snowmelt floods, the mixed floods were more frequent and more destructive, and their frequency increased with climate warming. The results provide a scientific basis for risk prevention and loss assessment of global snowmelt flood disasters. © 2022 Science Press (China).     

Evaluating typical flood risks in Yangtze River Economic Belt: application of a flood risk mapping framework

The Yangtze River Economic Belt is one of the three national strategies of China, while flood risk is one of the most important concerns in the development of Yangtze River Economic Belt. In order to decrease the risks caused by floods, complete flood management system and adequate pre-arranged planning are desiderated to be researched in advance. This study considers two typical situations of flood risk, in which one is sluice-control situation in flood detention area and another is dike-break situation in flood-protected area, and proposes a framework for flood risk mapping. The results show that the losses caused by flood hazards are massive both in the two typical cases when extreme floods happen. The economic losses of different indicators are of great difference in flood detention area and flood-protected area, respectively. The framework effectively handles the complex boundaries in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and provides more accurate flood routing information. The evacuation plan module which has been incorporated in the framework also provides informative assistance for emergent action of evacuation under urgent condition.     

Use of Systematic, Palaeoflood and Historical Data for the Improvement of Flood Risk Estimation. Review of Scientific Methods

The catastrophic floods recently occurring in Europe warn of the critical need forhydrologic data on floods over long-time scales. Palaeoflood techniques provideinformation on hydrologic variability and extreme floods over long-time intervals(100 to 10,000 yr) and may be used in combination with historical flood data (last1,000 yr) and the gauge record (last 30–50 yr). In this paper, advantages anduncertainties related to the reconstruction of palaeofloods in different geomorphologicalsettings and historical floods using different documentary sources are described.Systematic and non-systematic data can be combined in the flood frequency analysisusing different methods for the adjustment of distribution functions. Technical toolsintegrating multidisciplinary approaches (geologic, historical, hydraulic and statistical)on extreme flood risk assessment are discussed. A discussion on the potential theoreticalbases for solving the problem of dealing with non-systematic and non-stationary data ispresented. This methodology is being developed using new methodological approachesapplied to European countries as a part of a European Commission funded project (SPHERE).     

Seismic risk assessment and mapping at different levels

In 2012, the damage costs of floods in Russia amounted to about €300m, and these floods have caused nearly 200 fatalities (Kotlyakov et al. in Reg Res Rus 3(1):32–39, 2013). Risk assessment is one of the most pressing scientific topics in Russia, but most of the works are devoted to natural hazards assessment. The purpose of this work is to estimate the influence of hazardous hydrological phenomena on society. The field research was conducted in the Slavyansk municipal district in the Krasnodar region (the south-western part of Russia), which is a highly populated coastal territory with a high frequency of hazardous hydrological events. Modified methods of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) were used for potential economic damage calculation. The paper did not only focus on direct, tangible risks, but also included social risk (i.e. risk to life and health). Social vulnerability has been calculated directly as a percentage of vulnerable people, estimated in opinion polls, while in many recent papers the social vulnerability index was calculated as a combination of several statistical indicators. The resulting percentage of vulnerable people was converted to numbers of potential victims. Finally, the social risk was expressed by financial indicators in terms of the cost of the value of statistical life lost (Mrozek and Taylor in J Policy Anal Manag 21(2):253–270, 2002; Viscusi and Aldy in J Risk Uncertain 27(1):5–76, 2003). Social risk can be underestimated in comparison with economic risk because of a low “value of life” in Russia (no life insurance, neglecting of basic safety rules, etc.) (Guriev in Myths of economics, Alpina Business Books, Moscow, 2009).     

A coupled high-resolution hydrodynamic and cellular automata-based evacuation route planning model for pedestrians in flooding scenarios

Flooding is now becoming one of the most frequent and widely distributed natural hazards, with significant losses to human lives and property around the world. Evacuation of pedestrians during flooding events is a crucial factor in flood risk management, in addition to saving people’s lives and increasing time for rescue. The key objective of this work is to propose a shortest evacuation path planning algorithm by considering the evacuable areas and human instability during floods. A shortest route optimization algorithm based on cellular automata is established while using diagonal distance calculation methods in heuristic search algorithms. The Morpeth flood event that occurred in 2008 in the UK is used as a case study, and a highly accurate and efficient 2D hydrodynamic model is adopted to discuss the flood characteristics in flood plains. Two flood hazard assessment approaches [i.e., empirical and mechanics-based and experimental calibrated (M&E)] are chosen to study human instability. A comprehensive analysis shows that extreme events are better identified with mechanics-based and experimental calibration methods than with an empirical method. The result of M&E is used as the initial condition for the Morpeth evacuation scenario. Evacuation path planning in Morpeth shows that this algorithm can realize shortest route planning with multiple starting points and ending points at the microscale. These findings are of significance for flood risk management and emergency evacuation research.

     

Rapid analysis of risk assessment using developed simulation of chemical industrial accidents software package

The environmental consequences are defined as consequences of accidental release of hazardous substances to the natural environment. This release can lead to many hazards depending on the material stored. The consequences of these hazards to the environment are widespread and have significant importance to human communities living in the surroundings. The mathematical models are extremely useful tools to predict the impacts of chemical process accidents. The objective of this paper is to develop a software package for accident simulation and damage potential estimation. The software is coded in visual basic and is compatible with windows working environments. The software is called Simulation of chemical industrial accident. This application is a comprehensive software package which can be integrated with geographical information system to predict and display the consequence of chemical hazards. The software is a user-friendly and effective tool for evaluating the consequences of major chemical accidents, process decision making for land-use planning, namely locating suitable hazardous installations, hazardous waste disposal areas and emergency response plan.     

A multi-component flood risk assessment in the Maresme coast (NW Mediterranean)

Coastal regions are the areas most threatened by natural hazards, with floods being the most frequent and significant threat in terms of their induced impacts, and therefore, any management scheme requires their evaluation. In coastal areas, flooding is a hazard associated with various processes acting at different scales: coastal storms, flash floods, and sea level rise (SLR). In order to address the problem as a whole, this study presents a methodology to undertake a preliminary integrated risk assessment that determines the magnitude of the different flood processes (flash flood, marine storm, SLR) and their associated consequences, taking into account their temporal and spatial scales. The risk is quantified using specific indicators to assess the magnitude of the hazard (for each component) and the consequences in a common scale. This allows for a robust comparison of the spatial risk distribution along the coast in order to identify both the areas at greatest risk and the risk components that have the greatest impact. This methodology is applied on the Maresme coast (NW Mediterranean, Spain), which can be considered representative of developed areas of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The results obtained characterise this coastline as an area of relatively low overall risk, although some hot spots have been identified with high-risk values, with flash flooding being the principal risk process.