综合超前地质预报在西南溶岩隧道施工中的应用

在分析铁路隧道建设中常用的超前地质预报方法的基础上,通过地质调查对云南省某在建铁路隧道进行风险定级,并采用与风险等级相应的综合预报方案,准确地预报了该隧道潜在的地质灾害.根据预报结果及时调整了施工和应急方案,有效地预防了施工事故,减少了工程损失,保证了施工安全.     

Influences of spatial distribution of soil thickness on shallow landslide prediction

Shallow landslides usually occur during hevy rainfall and result in casualties and property losses. Thus, the possible locations where landslides are likely to occur must be identified in advance in order to avoid or reduce the harm they cause. When performing a slope-instability analysis, soil thickness is an important factor; however, soil thickness information from landslide-prone areas is rarely obtained. The objective of this study is to realize the influences of spatial distribution of soil thickness on shallow landslide prediction. Three different spatial soil-thickness distributions were applied to perform a slope-instability analysis, and uniform-distributed soil thicknesses from 0.4 m to 2.0 m were also applied for comparison. Geomorphologic information and hydrological records from a landslide-prone area in southern Taiwan were collected. Results show that the spatial distribution of soil thickness related to wetness index provides a reasonable estimation in order to avoid an over-prediction for landslide-prone areas or an under-prediction for stable areas. The analytical procedure used in this study is a simple way for assessing hillslope instability for shallow landslide prediction.     

Uncertainty Evaluation of the Surface Water’sHeavy Metal Health Risk in Baiyun Mountain

The water environmental health risk assessment relates environmental pollution with human health, taking its risk degree as evaluation index, quantitatively describing the risk that pollution does great harm to human body. To understand the surface water’s heavy metal health risk in Guangzhou Baiyun Mountain, this study measured the nine sampling points in Baiyun Mountain’s south mountain and north mountain, including these physical and chemical indicators, such as water temperature, pH value, Cd, As, Cr, Hg, Pb, Mn, Cu,Zn and Ni, constructing the uncertainty evaluation model of the surface water’s heavy metal health risk in Baiyun Mountain(heavy metal including radioactive substances, chemical carcinogens and body toxic substances, etc.), having a fuzzy classification of the health risk assessment standard of the surface water’s heavy metal, further determining the membership degree and the belonging of the risk grade. By comparing the evaluation results of the uncertainty model and the deterministic model, the study found that: the surface water’s heavy metal health risk level was higher in Guangzhou Baiyun Mountain in 2012, being of the high grade and above, even achieving the highest grade; the surface water’s heavy metal health risk level of the north mountain was higher than the south mountain; the uncertainty evaluation model of the surface water’s heavy metal health risk was more reasonable and comprehensive to reflect the real situation of the surface water’s heavy metal quality concentration than the deterministic model. Besides, in the relevant references these questions on the total score of the health risk of the uncertainty evaluation model, the membership degree formula of the risk grade, etc. need further discussion.     

A systematic approach for the assessment of flooding hazard and risk associated with a landslide dam

Inundation caused by landslide dams may occur in the upstream and downstream of the dams. A proper flooding hazard assessment is required for reaction planning and decision-making to mitigate possible flooding hazards caused by landslide dams. Both quick and detailed procedures can be used to evaluate inundation hazards, depending on the available time and information. This paper presents a systematic approach for the assessment of inundation hazards and risks caused by landslide dam formation and breaches. The approach includes the evaluation of dam-breach probability, assessment of upstream inundation hazard, assessment of downstream inundation hazard, and the classification of flooding risk. The proposed assessment of upstream inundation estimates the potential region of inundation and predicts the overtopping time. The risk level of downstream flooding is evaluated using a joint consideration of the breach probability of a landslide dam and the level of flooding hazard, which is classified using a flooding hazard index that indicates the risk of potential inundation. This paper proposes both quick and detailed procedures for the assessments of inundation in both the upstream and downstream of a landslide dam. An example of a landslide dam case study in southern Taiwan was used to demonstrate the applicability of the systematic approach.     

Weighted fuzzy kernel-clustering algorithm with adaptive differential evolution and its application on flood classification

Flood classification is the fundamental problem of flood risk analysis and plays an important role in flood disaster risk management. Considering the fact that flood classification is a problem of multi-attribute and multi-stage fuzzy synthetically evaluation, this paper mainly proposed the weighted fuzzy kernel-clustering algorithm (WFKCA) with adaptive differential evolution algorithm (ADE) to solve this problem. Firstly, WFKCA is detailed introduced, and then the differential evolution algorithm (DE) is applied for the fuzzy clustering, thus to obtain the better results. Taking into consideration the disadvantage of DE, ADE is present after the introduction of DE. Finally, the combination of WFKCA and ADE is applied for flood classification, and the results demonstrated the methodology is reasonable and reliable, thus provide a new effective approach for flood classification.     

Elevation change around Dome A region of Antarctica from EnviSat satellite radar altimetry during 2002–2012

The expected responses of ice sheets to climate warming are growth in the thickness of the inland ice areas and thinning near the margins. In recent decades, researchers have identified glacier acceleration along Antarctic ice sheet coastal margins. However, the study of ice sheet interiors where seasonal accumulation eventually balances ice wastage at the lower elevation is poorly understood. In this paper, the ice sheet elevation change around Dome A region is analyzed from 2002 to 2012 using two million elevation change measurements from EnviSat satellite radar altimeter data covering an area of about 7000 km². A declining trend of 0.572 ± 1.31 mm/year which means that the Dome A region was in balance during the last decade can be captured. In addition, two obvious changes in accumulation which divide elevation change time series into three independent equilibration stages are also extracted. In order to explain this phenomenon, two speculations related to snowfall and firn compaction are proposed in this paper.     

The study on automatic registration of InSAR images

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) allows production of high resolution DEM and detection of small earth motions using multiple pass SAR data sets obtained by remote sensing satellite. But the whole process has not yet reached sufficient robustness to warrant automated DEM production as commonly produced by stereovision with optical images. The automatic algorithm for precision registration is one of the bottlenecks in InSAR data processing. In this paper, an automatic approach with multi-step image matching algorithm is presented. All procedures are automatically implemented. The experiment is carried out successfully with SIR-C/L-band InSAR data. The triangular piecewise rectification is also advanced in reducing local distortion between the images and processing the large scene image. The primary result has prospect in the precision registration for the repeat-track InSAR data and reveals the potential of the presented automatic strategy.     

Distance-limited filter for extracting ground points

The extraction of points on the bare earth from point clouds acquired by airborne laser scanning is one of the most important steps for the generation of digital terrain models (DTM). This process is called “filtering”. However, most of the current filters erode the bare earth in steep sloped landscapes and at discontinuities, and they retain low vegetation. Therefore, a new filtering method for extracting ground points based on a distance limit is proposed in this paper. The angle criterion is used to assure the robustness of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed filtering method can effectively derive the ground points from point clouds in complex urban areas.     

Measuring the influence of map label density on perceived complexity: a user study using eye tracking

ABSTRACT

We combine eye tracking and a questionnaire-based approach to explore the influence of label density on the perceived visual complexity of maps. We design two experiments in which participants are asked to search for the names of point features on maps and to rate the map complexity and legibility for different label densities. Specifically, we conduct a highly controlled experiment in which all the map variables except the label density are held constant (the controlled experiment). Then, we conduct a second experiment following the same protocol but using real maps as visual stimuli (the real-map experiment) to verify if the results of the controlled experiment were applicable to real maps. The results of both experiments indicate a significantly positive correlation between perceived visual complexity and label density and between the response time in visual search tasks and label density. Surprisingly, we observe a significant inverse correlation between the label density and two eye movement parameters (fixation duration and fixation frequency) between the two experiments. We discuss how the variables of real maps might have affected these eye movement parameters and why the results of the two experiments are inconsistent. Our findings suggest that eye tracking parameters are not reliable indicators of map complexity. These empirical results can be helpful to future map design and map complexity investigation.