Effects of providing measures against earthquakes: experimental studies on the perceived risks of disasters and disaster preparedness intentions in Japan

This research examined the effects of providing measures against disasters on recipients’ perceived risks and preparedness intentions by conducting two experimental studies. A provision of a set of emergency food was manipulated in the first experiment. Participants (N = 143) were randomly assigned to the provided condition or non-provided condition. In the second experiment (N = 123), provision of an emergency toilet kit was manipulated. The results of the two experiments consistently indicated that (1) the provision of a measure increased the recipients’ perceived risks of the disaster concerned, (2) it increased their preparedness intentions for the disaster, and (3) it had no effects on perceived risks of or preparedness intentions against disasters unrelated to the measure provided. These results were contrary to the prediction deduced from the protection effect and single action effect. The findings in this study encourage promoting the risk management policy of providing people with disaster measures as the first step in disaster preparedness.     

Regional modelling of rainfall-induced runoff using hydrological model by incorporating plant cover effects: case study in Kelantan,Malaysia

The objective of this paper is to develop a spatial temporal runoff modelling of local rainfall patterns effect on the plant cover hilly lands in Kelantan River Basin. Rainfall interception loss based on leaf area index, loss/infiltration on the ground surface, and runoff calculation were considered as the main plant cover effects on the runoff volume. In this regard, a hydrological and geotechnical grid-based regional model (integrated model) was performed using Microsoft Excel^® and GIS framework system for deterministic modelling of rainfall-induced runoff by incorporating plant cover effects. The infiltration process of the current model was integrated with the precipitation distribution method and rainfall interception approach while the runoff analysis of integrated model was employed based on loss/infiltration water on the ground surface with consideration of water interception loss by canopy and the remaining surface water. In the following, the spatial temporal analysis of rainfall-induced runoff was performed using 10 days of hourly rainfall events at the end of December 2014 in Kelantan River Basin. The corresponding changes in pressure head and consequent rate of infiltration were calculated during rainfall events. Subsequently, flood volume is computed using local rainfall patterns, along with water interception loss and the remaining surface water in the study area. The results showed the land cover changes caused significant differences in hydrological response to surface water. The increase in runoff volume of the Kelantan River Basin is as a function of deforestation and urbanization, especially converting the forest area to agricultural land (i.e. rubber and mixed agriculture).     

Logistic regression model for sinkhole susceptibility due to damaged sewer pipes

The occurrence of anthropogenic sinkholes in urban areas can lead to severe socioeconomic losses. A damaged underground sewer pipe is regarded as one of the primary causes of such a phenomenon. This study adopted the best subsets regression method to produce a logistic regression model that evaluates the susceptibility for sinkholes induced by damaged sewer pipes. The model was developed by analyzing the sewer pipe network as well as cases of sinkholes in Seoul, South Korea. Among numerous sewer pipe characteristics tested as explanatory variables, the length, age, elevation, burial depth, size, slope, and materials of the sewer pipe were found to influence the occurrence of sinkhole. The proposed model reasonably estimated the sinkhole susceptibility in the area studied, with an area value under the receiver-operating characteristics curve of 0.753. The proposed methodology will serve as a useful tool that can help local governments to choose a cavity inspection regime, and to prevent sinkholes induced by damaged sewer pipes.     

Integration of GIS,AHP and TOPSIS for earthquake hazard analysis

Worldwide, earthquakes and related disasters have persistently had severe negative impacts on human livelihoods and have caused widespread socioeconomic and environmental damage. The severity of these disasters has prompted recognition of the need for comprehensive and effective disaster and emergency management (DEM) efforts, which are required to plan, respond to and develop risk mitigation strategies. In this regard, recently developed methods, known as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), have been widely used in DEM domains by emergency managers to greatly improve the quality of the decision-making process, making it more participatory, explicit, rational and efficient. In this study, MCDA techniques of the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), integrated with GIS, were used to produce earthquake hazard and risk maps for earthquake disaster monitoring and analysis for a case study region of Küçükçekmece in Istanbul, Turkey. The five main criteria that have the strongest influence on the impact of earthquakes on the study region were determined: topography, distance to epicentre, soil classification, liquefaction and fault/focal mechanism. AHP was used to determine the weights of these parameters, which were also used as input into the TOPSIS method and GIS (ESRI ArcGIS) for simulating these outputs to produce earthquake hazard maps. The resulting earthquake hazard maps created by both the AHP and TOPSIS models were compared, showing high correlation and compatibility. To estimate the elements at risk, population and building data were used with the AHP and TOPSIS hazard maps for potential loss assessment; thus, we demonstrated the potential of integrating GIS with AHP and TOPSIS in generating hazard maps for effective earthquake disaster and risk management.     

Evaluating climate change adaptation efforts on the US 50 states’ hazard mitigation plans

Climate change brings uncertain risks of climate-related natural hazards. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA in Climate change: long-term trends and their implications for emergency management, 2011. https://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/programs/oppa/climate_change_paper.pdf) has issued a policy directive to integrate climate change adaptation actions into hazard mitigation programs, policies, and plans. However, to date there has been no comprehensive empirical study to examine the extent to which climate change issues are integrated into state hazard mitigation plans (SHMPs). This study develops 18 indicators to examine the extent of climate change considerations in the 50 SHMPs. The results demonstrate that these SHMPs treat climate change issues in an uneven fashion, with large variations present among the 50 states. The overall plan quality for climate change considerations was sustained at an intermediate level with regard to climate change-related awareness, analysis, and actions. The findings confirm that climate change concepts and historic extreme events have been well recognized by the majority of SHMPs. Even though they are not specific to climate change, mitigation and adaptation strategies that can help reduce climate change risks have been adopted in these plans. However, the plans still lack a detailed assessment of climate change and more incentives for collaboration strategies beyond working with emergency management agencies.     

Model Test on Self-Weight Consolidation of the Red Mud Tailings Placed in the Karsts

The management of tailings depends on its consolidation behavior to great extent. The red mud tailings in Pingguo, Guangxi is of high water content and void ratio. The present paper takes the red mud aluminiferous tailings in Pingguo, Guangxi as prototype. Model tests were carried out to study the consolidation behavior of red mud aluminiferous tailings that were landfilled layer by layer. The layered settlement and the water discharge caused by self-weight consolidation were studied. The influence of the latter landfilled layer of red mud on the previous layer was analyzed. The results show that the settlement at the surface with time can be divided into two stages. During the first stage, a thin layer of water appeared and the thickness kept increasing at the top of the mud surface with the particle of red mud sinking. During the second stage, water drained from the mud and settlement developed slowly. Cracks developed at the surface due to evaporation and the red mud near the surface became unsaturated. When the previous landfilled layer consolidated to the degree that the water content was less than 40%, the later landfilled layer of red mud will have little influence on the settlement of previous landfilled layer.     

A model for the representation of emergency cases

The aim of this paper is to propose a location model of earthquake emergency service depot on the basis of hybrid multi-attribute decision-making method. The advantage of the proposed method is that practical mixed uncertainty of location decision information is considered, and the corresponding factors that affect the location of transfer stations are contained. To solve the location problem, a hybrid multi-attribute decision procedure without information transformation is developed. Besides, a novel weighting method and aggregation process is given. Finally, a numerical example is provided to show the feasibility and validity of the proposed method.     

Geochronology,Geochemistry and Petrogenesis of the Pungco Ophiolite,TibetEI北大核心CSCD

Although the middle section of the Bangong-Nujiang suture zone has been intensively investigated, its tectonic framework and evolution is still controversy. The Pungco ophiolite has a relative complete ophiolitic complex, which is an ideal specimen for studying this tricky problem. LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dating of zircons from the diabasic rock yielded an age of 159.0±2.1 Ma. This age suggests that the Pungco ophiolite was formed in the Late Jurassic, indicating the development of the Late Jurassic ophiolite in the third ophiolitic subzone. The whole-rock major and trace element compositions of diabasic and basaltic rocks exhibit mixed arc and N-MORB geochemical characteristics. Two diabasic samples have (87Sr/86Sr)i values of 0.7055 and 0.7063 and εNd(t) values of 11.28 and 11.84, respectively. The geochemical signatures and formation age of the Pungco ophiolite suggest that this ophiolite was probably produced in an active continental fore-arc setting. It originated from a N-MORB-like depleted mantle source with the involvement of subducted-slab fluids. Considering the regional geological background, the Pungco ophiolite was likely generated during the southward subduction of the Bangong-Nujiang Tethyan oceanic lithosphere beneath the Lhasa terrane, and belongs to a regional archipelagic arc-basin system together with the other Early Jurassic-Early Cretaceous ophiolites from the northern Tibet Lake district. © 2018, Science Press. All right reserved.     

Network-based triple-frequency carrier phase ambiguity resolution between reference stations using BDS data for long baselines

Network-based ambiguity resolution (AR) between reference stations is the prerequisite to realize a precise real-time kinematic positioning service. With the help of BDS triple-frequency signals, we can efficiently deal with the ionospheric delay and tropospheric delay, and achieve rapid and reliable AR. To overcome the inaccurate ionospheric delay estimated by the geometry-free three carrier ambiguity resolution (GF TCAR) technique, which leads to failure in the original ambiguity resolution, we propose an ionospheric-free (IF) TCAR method to resolve the ambiguity between the reference stations over long baselines. Taking full advantage of the known positions of the reference stations, the easily resolved extra-wide-lane (EWL) ambiguity, and the IF phase combinations, we can reliably fix the wide-lane (WL) ambiguity. A Kalman filter is applied to estimate precise IF ambiguities and the original ambiguity is resolved with the fixed WL ambiguity. A numerical analysis with triple-frequency BDS data from three long baselines of a CORS network is provided to compare the AR performance of GF TCAR with that of IF TCAR. The results show that both methods can reliably resolve the WL ambiguity with a remarkable correctly-fixed rate of higher than 99%, and the reliably-fixed rates of the IF TCAR slightly increase from 92.19, 94.67 and 94.61–98.26, 99.54 and 97.51% for the three baselines. Herein “correctly-fixed” and “reliably-fixed” mean the difference between the float ambiguity and the true one are less than ± 0.5 and ± 0.25 cycles, respectively. On the other hand, the AR performance of the original signals with the IF TCAR method is much better than that with the GF TCAR method attaining a 100% correctly-fixed rate, while the GF TCAR method can hardly fix the original ambiguity with the largest bias being as much as 4 cycles because of the amplified systematic bias.     

Position-domain integrity risk-based ambiguity validation for the integer bootstrap estimator

Integrity monitoring for ambiguity resolution is of significance for utilizing the high-precision carrier phase differential positioning for safety–critical navigational applications. The integer bootstrap estimator can provide an analytical probability density function, which enables the precise evaluation of the integrity risk for ambiguity validation. In order to monitor the effect of unknown ambiguity bias on the integer bootstrap estimator, the position-domain integrity risk of the integer bootstrapped baseline is evaluated under the complete failure modes by using the worst-case protection principle. Furthermore, a partial ambiguity resolution method is developed in order to satisfy the predefined integrity risk requirement. Static and kinematic experiments are carried out to test the proposed method by comparing with the traditional ratio test method and the protection level-based method. The static experimental result has shown that the proposed method can achieve a significant global availability improvement by 51% at most. The kinematic result reveals that the proposed method obtains the best balance between the positioning accuracy and the continuity performance.