The black water around the Changjiang (Yangtze) Estuary in the spring of 2003

The Changjiang (Yangtze) Estuary is located in the East China Sea shelf with shallow water. Affected by the tide mixing and the runoff of the Changjiang River and the Qiantang River, the turbidity is very high. Generally, the water-leaving radiance is high in the turbid water because of the large particle scattering. Based on the in-situ data and ocean color remote sensing data of SeaWiFS, it was found that there was a black water region with the normalized water-leaving radiances less than 0.5 mW/(cm2·μm2·...     

基于国家海洋治理和全球气候变化的我国海洋灾害防治

为建立和完善现代化的海洋灾害防治体系,提高我国海洋治理和应对全球气候变化的能力,文章以全球治理和国家治理为背景,在明确致灾因子、承灾体、灾害以及灾害风险和管理等基本概念及其内涵的基础上,分析全球气候变化背景下我国海洋灾害及其风险的特征以及海洋灾害防治的关键性和基础性科学问题,并提出我国构建海洋灾害防治体系的建议。研究结果表明:在全球气候变化的影响下,我国沿海地区的海洋灾害风险复杂多变且有所提升;提出以群-环-域为主体的体系架构,研究全球气候变化与区域海洋的响应和反馈、全球气候变化背景下海洋灾害与风险的特征和规律以及综合海洋灾害风险评估和海洋灾害防治等问题;在我国构建海洋灾害防治体系的过程中,应加强科学研究以及技术和信息支撑、促进区域和全球联动联防以及提高全社会对海洋灾害的认知和防范水平。     

鄱阳湖区洪灾风险与农户脆弱性分析

This paper quantitatively explores farmers' vulnerability to flood in the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) with the supports of GIS spatial functions. The analysis consists of three major steps,which is based on the spatial unit of township. Firstly,the spatial extent and charac-teristics of flood risk areas were determined using a digital elevation model (DEM) derived from the 1:50,000 topographic map. Secondly,for each of the township,six indices indicating the economic activities of local farmers were calculated. These indices are: rural population proportion,cultivated land proportion,GDP per unit area,employment proportion of primary industry,net rural income per capita and agricultural income proportion. These six indices were then normalized and used for later vulnerability assessment. Thirdly,the normalized indices (as GIS data layers) were overlaid with the flood risk areas to produce the risk coeffi-cient for each township and to calculate the overall vulnerability for each township. The analysis results show that in the PLR there are high flood risk areas where the farmers' livings are seriously influenced or threatened. About 55.56% of the total 180 townships in the flood risk areas have a high degree of flood vulnerability. The townships under flood risk are mainly distributed in the areas around the Poyang Lake and the areas along the "five rivers".     

基于VSD模型的铁山港湾红树林生态系统脆弱性初步评价

基于脆弱性域图 (vulnerability scoping diagram, VSD)评价模型, 从暴露程度、敏感性、适应能力3个方面构建了红树林生态系统脆弱性评价指标体系。采用改进的综合指数法和模糊综合评价法, 重新定义脆弱性分级标准, 定量评价了铁山港湾红树林生态系统在1989年、2003年和2014年3个年份的脆弱性水平。结果显示, 铁山港湾红树林生态系统在3个年份的脆弱性水平值分别为0.145、0.255、0.334, 呈现增加趋势。首先, 铁山港湾红树林生态系统面临的暴露程度不断增大, 主要胁迫因子为滩涂围垦面积、废水排放量; 其次, 生态系统的敏感性增强, 主要敏感因子是海洋生物质量综合指数、底栖生物和潮间带生物多样性指数; 第三, 生态系统的适应能力略有增加, 总体上较弱。     

按新旧规范设计的多层住宅砖房地震易损性的对比

本文采用概率方法借助于拉丁超立方采样技术和非线性地震反应时程分析对按现行规范设计的多层住宅砖房的地震易损性进行分析,并与按上一代规范设计的多层住宅砖房的地震易损性分析结果[1]进行了比较,为进一步研究这类结构的地震安全性、未来地震的损失预测以及防震减灾对策奠定基础。     

Measuring household vulnerability to climate change—Why markets matter

Climate change and climate variability affect households in developing countries both directly through their impact on crop yields and indirectly through their impact on wages, food prices and the livelihoods of the poor. Therefore, vulnerable household groups cannot be identified without considering their position in and access to markets. I illustrate the effects – transmitted through markets – that are significant in household exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to climate change by simulating productivity shocks to maize up to 2030 due to climate change in a computable general equilibrium model of Malawi. The results show that rural households with large land holdings may benefit from the adverse impact of climate change on maize yields as a result of increased maize prices. Urban poor and small-scale farmers are vulnerable to climate change due to the large portion of their incomes spent on food. Existing vulnerability measures that do not consider equilibrium effects and characterise all farmers as vulnerable may therefore be misleading.     

Disaster risk reduction legislations: Is there a move from events to processes?

Disaster research and scholarship is now advocating a shift from focusing on the hazard event to processes that generate vulnerability and loss of resilience to disasters. Disaster legislations are among prominent instruments that can highlight the tensions as well as challenges that are being encountered towards this change in focus. Using textual analysis, this paper presents a study that investigated whether five post-2002 disaster legislations have shifted emphasis from the hazard to the vulnerability and resilience paradigms. The five examples illustrate that while there is a slight change, at least in rhetoric, from response to a prevention focus, disaster legislations largely promote a centralised institutional framework, with inadequate resource commitments and limited participation from vulnerable communities. Consequently, while generalisations simply cannot be made without a wider analysis of many more examples from different countries, the five disaster legislations appear to re-emphasise the response focus with less attention on the processes that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience. The conclusion is that while the rhetoric has changed, the disaster legislations have not significantly moved from the hazard to vulnerability and resilience focus suggesting that reduction of losses and damages to disasters remains a big challenge     

Flood hazard and risk analysis in the southwest region of Bangladesh

Flood hazard and risk assessment was conducted to identify the priority areas in the southwest region of Bangladesh for flood mitigation. Simulation of flood flow through the Gorai and Arial Khan river system and its floodplains was done by using a hydrodynamic model. After model calibration and verification, the model was used to simulate the flood flow of 100‐year return period for a duration of four months. The maximum flooding depths at different locations in the rivers and floodplains were determined. The process in determining long flooding durations at every grid point in the hydrodynamic model is laborious and time‐consuming. Therefore the flood durations were determined by using satellite images of the observed flood in 1988, which has a return period close to 100 years. Flood hazard assessment was done considering flooding depth and duration. By dividing the study area into smaller land units for hazard assessment, the hazard index and the hazard factor for each land unit for depth and duration of flooding were determined. From the hazard factors of the land units, a flood hazard map, which indicates the locations of different categories of hazard zones, was developed. It was found that 54% of the study area was in the medium hazard zone, 26% in the higher hazard zone and 20% in the lower hazard zone. Due to lack of sufficient flood damage data, flood damage vulnerability is simply considered proportional to population density. The flood risk factor of each land unit was determined as the product of the flood hazard factor and the vulnerability factor. Knowing the flood risk factors for the land units, a flood risk map was developed based on the risk factors. These maps are very useful for the inhabitants and floodplain management authorities to minimize flood damage and loss of human lives. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Urban Seismic Risk Evaluation: A Holistic Approach

Risk has been defined, for management purposes, as the potential economic, social and environmental consequences of hazardous events that may occur in a specified period of time. However, in the past, the concept of risk has been defined in a fragmentary way in many cases, according to each scientific discipline involved in its appraisal. From the perspective of this article, risk requires a multidisciplinary evaluation that takes into account not only the expected physical damage, the number and type of casualties or economic losses, but also the conditions related to social fragility and lack of resilience conditions, which favour the second order effects (indirect effects) when a hazard event strikes an urban centre. The proposed general method of urban risk evaluation is multi hazard and holistic, that is, an integrated and comprehensive approach to guide decision-making. The evaluation of the potential physical damage (hard approach) as the result of the convolution of hazard and physical vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure is the first step of this method. Subsequently, a set of social context conditions that aggravate the physical effects are also considered (soft approach). In the method here proposed, the holistic risk evaluation is based on urban risk indicators. According to this procedure, a physical risk index is obtained, for each unit of analysis, from existing loss scenarios, whereas the total risk index is obtained by factoring the former index by an impact factor or aggravating coefficient, based on variables associated with the socio-economic conditions of each unit of analysis. Finally, the proposed method is applied in its single hazard form to the holistic seismic risk evaluation for the cities of Bogota (Colombia) and Barcelona (Spain).