9th Multi-Hazards Symposium 2013

The APRU symposium series on Multi-Hazards around the Pacific Rim is having its ninth symposium from 28 to 29 October 2013 at National Taiwan University in Chinese Taipei.

Unfortunately, I have only just become aware of this event so will not be attending. It is unlikely I would have had time at this stage of my PhD to travel there to present in any case.

The 9th APRU symposium is hosted by the Center for Weather Climate and Disaster Research (WCDR) at National Taiwan University. For general information, please refer to the website.

The 9th APRU symposium aims to convene scholars and experts from countries around the Pacific Rim. The inter-disciplinary knowledge on multi-hazard researches can be exchanged and shared through APRU collaboration. The symposium will focus on related topics of multi-hazards induced by extreme weather, earthquake, volcanic activity and haze pollution. Other issues are also included such as advanced monitoring and forecasting techniques, risk assessment, disaster health and emergency management, as well as education on disaster reduction.


Topics:

1.Multi-hazards induced by extreme weather; Multi-hazards induced by earthquake; Multi-hazards induced by volcanic activity; Air pollution and haze related issue

2.Disaster risk assessment and impact analysis; Advanced research on monitoring, sensing, nowcasting and forecasting

3.Disaster management and education; Post-disaster recovery and reconstruction; Disaster health and emergency management

Foresight Review Case Study: Global Multiple Hazard and Risk Mapping

The Foresight Review commissioned in 2012 has a section (co-written by me) on multiple hazard and risk mapping. I forgot to post something about it at the time. Click on the links below for access to the documents.

Reducing Risks of Future Disasters: Priorities for Decision Makers.

Evidence base document for download: State-of-the-Art in Risk Mapping
CASE STUDY: Global Multiple Hazard and Risk mapping (p49)
Authors: Mirianna E.A. Budimir, Peter M. Atkinson and Hugh G. Lewis


A quote from the document for you all:

"Multi-hazard risk assessment should also take into consideration the interaction between multiple hazards affecting an area. Natural hazards act in a natural system and as such are complex and affect each other. The cascading effects of natural hazards and their impact on resultant risk is an important area of research which has received little attention to date."

Thoughts on NERC PURE Associates Brokerage Workshop

On 10th September I attended the NERC PURE Associates brokerage workshop in Oxford, aimed at bringing together researchers and practitioners to collaborate for a grant. The call aims “to fund scientists to work with business, policy-makers and NGOs to apply their knowledge and skills to improve assessments of natural hazard risk and enhance decision-making”, by funding projects of between three to six months’ duration that will transfer existing knowledge, models and expertise into business, policy or NGOs.

NERC stipulated the aim of the projects should be either:

a. To produce robust risk assessments based upon single or multiple natural hazards that integrate measures or models of exposure and vulnerability; this will enable decision-makers to take action to manage risk;

b. To develop tools to support decision-making under environmental uncertainty.

NERC would particularly encourage applications for projects which:

• develop robust assessments of risk to infrastructure, business operations and supply chains from natural hazards, including extreme weather;


• develop risk models around multi-hazard assessments;


• develop tools to visualise and communicate risk and uncertainty;


• develop tools to inform planning for long-term investment such as infrastructure or business interruption, including risks to the supply chain;


• develop tools to help emergency planning and responses, and build community resilience through humanitarian and development organisations;


• adapt tools developed in other application areas for managing risk and uncertainty to natural hazards.

The day was incredibly useful. I made lots of contacts and met people doing really interesting research, with great ideas for projects. Personally, these types of events always get me re-excited about research and reminds me why I am in this field of research. A few things occurred during the day that really surprised or struck me and I thought I would share them on this blog.

After being informed three years ago that multi-hazard risk assessment is already normal practice for catastrophe modelling and risk assessment in the industry (which deflated me a little/lot), I was surprised to discover that is not entirely true. Some Cat Models only account for the major hazards affecting a region and landslide hazards are often entirely missing altogether. Perhaps I was a little naive all those years ago to take the word of one practitioner as gospel. But I had no way of checking. Competitive businesses do not put their information online as open source for all to see. This is entirely natural as they do not want other competitors stealing their methods, but holds back the development of the field of research.

The poor-showing of NGOs at the event surprised me. Although it was emphasised the purpose of the workshop was to get practitioners networking with academics, when the attendee list was skimmed, there were very few of those end users and NGOs - the majority of those there were academics. One of the questions from the research grant call was 'What are the biggest problems facing NGOs?'. With very few there from an NGO, there was noone to answer the question. Perhaps my expectations of the number of NGOs to be there was a little high though. The gap between NGOs and academics is a problem that I keep seeing crop up just in the last few years of my PhD research. There is a realisation that NGOs and end-users need to be involved in research and collaborate or help guide the research questions of academics, but at the end of the day the gap is still pretty big between them. This call was specifically aimed at trying to bridge that gap. I hope that some collaborations come out as a result of the call.

Bridging gaps between disciplines and communicating research is supposed to be encouraged, and yet specialism is rewarded and prized at Universities. This is a huge conflict of priorities. During the workshop, the idea od a 'translator' was raised - someone who understands the science, empathises with the needs of the end-users, and is able to speak both languages and act as a broker. They are essential and valued in communicating the information between scientists and end-users. But in academia they are rarely recognised or respected - publications in academic journals appears to be the end goal. Which on the one hand is right and on the other is frustrating. Perhaps we need a new discipline in academia specifically aimed at this communication, and Geography is the department that this would really work.

Unfortunately, there is still a lack of multi-hazard research. At the workshop, there were only a few proposals talked about that were aimed at this area. And it didn't pop up at all in the discussion sessions. Academics are encouraged to be specialists, and getting round this with inter-disciplinary teams and research projects could help, but often raises more difficulties.

There were a few proposals that were aimed at tackling the multi-hazard issues, and this was encouraging. The field is obviously still new and developing, and it is slowly gathering evidence, models and information behind it. I hope this continues and I look forward to following these developments.

Dynamics and Impacts of Interacting Natural Hazards Workshop Report

A report documenting the First Dynamics and Impacts of Interacting Natural Hazards Workshop Report is now available online.

The First Workshop on the Dynamics and Impact of Interacting Natural Hazards was held at University College London on 14 February 2013.  The one day workshop was attended by 20 participants from across academia (with representatives from six universities in the UK and Europe), industry and the public sector, and was hosted by the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Centre (ABUHC).  The event was a collaborative effort between three PhD students – myself, Melanie Duncan and Joel Gill – who are currently working in the field of interacting multi-hazards. 

The short report summarises the presentations and discussions that took place and outlines the actions that will be taken forward.  The original workshop agenda and the participants at the workshop are included in the Appendices.

Three main discussion and presentation sessions took place on the day:

Session 1: Defining and introducing multi-hazard and multi-hazard interactions

Session 2: Methods to identify, model and constrain multi-hazard interactions

Session 3: Practical applications and mitigation strategies

The workshop provided a unique opportunity for networking with researchers and practitioners with an interest in interacting hazards – participants discussed potential collaborations as well as methods for improving the dissemination of their research. 

Dynamics and Impact of Interacting Hazards Workshop

THE DYNAMICS AND IMPACT OF INTERACTING HAZARDS WORKSHOP

Co-organized between UCL, KCL, and Southampton University

London, UK (14 February 2013)

On 14 February 2013, the First Dynamics and Impact of Interacting Hazards Workshop was convened as a collaborative effort between three PhD students – Mirianna Budimir (University of Southampton), Melanie Duncan (University College London), and Joel Gill (King's College London). The workshop, hosted this year by the UCL Aon Benfield Hazard Centre, aimed to explore current research into interacting hazards and future collaborative opportunities, as well as emphasising the importance of hazard interactions.

This one day workshop was attended by 20 participants from academia, industry and the public sector, with representatives from six universities in the UK and Europe. Short presentations were delivered on themes including defining a multi-hazard approach, tools and methodologies to constrain hazard interactions, and the effective integration of hazard interaction knowledge into hazard assessments.

Interspersed between these presentations, a large amount of time was given for small (often very animated) group discussions, with each smaller group reporting back to the larger set of participants. Discussions were wide ranging, sharing ideas about different types of evidence for interacting hazards, balancing the complexities of interacting hazards research with the needs of stakeholders, and the importance of assessing uncertainty.

  

 

The workshop highlighted the importance of interacting hazards research, as well as the challenges of retaining focus within such a broad topic. It also verified the importance of ensuring a standard terminology is developed and used within the emerging field of multi-hazard research. The convenors will be publishing a full workshop report on the interacting hazards website (www.interactinghazards.com), and hope to organise further workshops in the future.

Landslides following Guatemala earthquake

Initial reports of landslides from the 7th November 2012 7.4M earthquake of the coast of Guatemala suggest they have become a 'significant problem'.

Please see Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Blog for a more detailed post. I will hopefully follow up as more becomes known.

Interacting Natural Hazards Workshop/Conference

Announcing a great upcoming conference on interacting and cascading hazards:

The Dynamics and Impact of Interacting Natural Hazards

An interdisciplinary workshop on current research and future directions

14^th‒15^th February 2013

To be held at: University College London, London, UK

Convened by University College London, King’s College London, and the University of Southampton. 

Many populated areas are affected by more than one natural hazard, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, floods, storms, and wildfires. Different hazards can overlap in time and location, so that the total impact on a community is increased by interactions between the hazards. Example of interaction types include:

·         One hazard triggering another or a cascade of hazards

(e.g., an earthquake triggering a landslide, which dams a river and causes flooding).

·         One hazard changing the probability of another occurring

(e.g., a wildfire removing vegetation and increasing the probability of landslides during storms).

·         Temporal changes in vulnerability during successive hazards

(e.g., the damage to buildings during an earthquake may increase both the building and human population’s’ vulnerability to subsequent hazards, such as hurricanes or tsunamis).

Hazard assessments tend to focus on the impact of single hazards and so overlook the cumulative impact of interacting hazards. To advance current methods of assessment it is, therefore, essential to improve the characterisation and modelling of hazard interactions and their impacts. The results should be of immediate value to governmental and non-governmental agencies and to business.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                

This two-day workshop will bring together field practitioners, researchers and representatives from the academic, humanitarian, development, governmental and business sectors in order to evaluate the practical applications of current research and to define key directions for future investigations into the interaction of natural hazards. Although all relevant research is welcome, specific themes will be:

·         Methods for measuring or analysing the interactions between hazards

·         Evaluating and mitigating the impact of hazard interactions

·         Understanding temporal and spatial changes in vulnerability

·         Strategies for future interdisciplinary research in hazard interactions

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for oral or poster presentations in the specific themes above. Details and formatting guidelines for the submission of abstracts can be found on the conference website (details below). Abstracts may include a key figure or table. We anticipate that the conference will include a range of session types, and therefore the number of oral contributions may be restricted in order to encourage extended discussion. The registration process allows you to submit “Points for Discussion” which will be used to provide a framework for discussion and other interactive sessions.

The deadline for registration and the submission of abstracts and discussion points is 14^th December 2012. There is a provisional limit of 40 places. To register, please complete the registration form at:

www.interactinghazards.com/workshop-information/registration

For further information and details, please see the website at www.interactinghazards.com or contact Mirianna Budimir at mirianna.budimir@interactinghazards.com.

We look forward to your contributions

Mirianna Budimir, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Southampton

Melanie Duncan, AON Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London  

Joel Gill, Department of Geography, King’s College London