Interesting news this summer

Landslide Fatalities

Dave Petley has recently published an online paper in Geology on "Global patterns of loss of life from landslides".

See here for cumulative frequency landslide fatality data over the past 10 years - with earthquake-induced fatalities and without.


Earthquake Secondary Hazards

Researchers at Durham University, UK, spearheaded by Alexander Densmore and Mark Allen, are investigating the cascading effect of earthquakes in a project "When the Shaking Stops". This is primarily looking at the effect of earthquakes on landslides and river basin changes, the secondary effects of large earthquakes.


Hurricane Vulnerability
A recent study by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, based in Boulder, Colorado, has found that people are more vulnerable to hurricanes further inland from the coast in the USA than previously thought. This is mostly due to people being less prepared to deal with hurricanes than those who live on the coast. A 2000 study found that this was "often as the result of intense rain, flooding, mudslides, and tornadoes" - which I would consider cascading hazards.

Maplecroft's Natural Hazards Risk Atlas 2012

In August, Maplecroft published their new Natural Hazards Risk Atlas 2012. This excerpt is taken directly from their website:

"Maplecroft’s Natural Hazards Risk Atlas 2012 is designed to help business, investors and international organisations compare the risks of natural hazards within 197 countries and assess their resilience during and after the occurrence of a natural hazard. The Atlas includes indices and interactive subnational maps of 12 natural hazard risks, as well as scorecards for all countries. In addition, the Atlas also measures countries’ overall economic exposure and socio-economic resilience to natural hazards."

What is great about htis map is that although it on a global scale, the resolution is much finer than national-level. It also appears to take a social perspective on natural hazards. I haven't been able to uncover much detail however about what indices were used and exactly how the map was created. It is unclear how the 12 hazards were collated - aggregated or whether interacting effects were taken into consideration. Although it was probably not the latter..... Something to improve on in the future?

New Review Paper on Mult-Hazard Risk and Cascading Hazards

I have recently come across a new paper out in July this year reviewing multi-hazard risk (including cascading hazards). This is a great paper written by Melanie Kappes, who I met at the EGU in 2011. It covers the current available literature on the subject and identifies challenges in dealing with multi-hazards. It is the first of it's kind to synthesise the current state of research and point the way forward to common issues which will need to be dealt with in the future of this field.

Particularly for my own research, there is a section on cascading hazards ('dealing with relations between hazard types') that gathers together all references to these phenomena in the literature. Several different approaches to investigating cascading events are outlined such as interaction matrixes and event trees. And it is always comforting to know that noone has published work on what you are researching for your PhD! There's always a little worrying thought that the research may have slipped past without you noticing.

For anyone who is interested in cascading hazards, this is a key paper and an ideal starting point to follow the references. I wish this had been available in my first year of PhD, and had intended to write a similar paper on the sme topic later this year as it was really needed for the field.

I hope the paper helps people as much as it has helped me.

Kappes, M., Keiler, M., Elverfeldt, K., and Glade, T., (2012), "Challenges of analyzing multi-hazard risk: a review", Nat Hazards.



(Thanks to J.Gill for making me aware of the paper!)

37th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop

I have recently returned from the 37^th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Broomfield, Colorado, organised by the Natural Hazards Centre, Boulder. I presented a poster on my recent research into ‘Global Cascading Hazard Casualty Modelling: Earthquake-Triggered Landslides’. I hope to write up my research soon and get it published and will update here with any further news.

There were no sessions on cascading or linked hazards specifically, but I would like to share some of my impressions of the main messages to come from the workshop.

1.       The workshop was mainly from a more human geography/social science standpoint, so one of the key messages was: it’s all about the people. Science is definitely necessary, but at the end of the day, can only get us so far because it is where hazards interact with humans that disasters are formed. The decisions people on the ground make (whether it is the local authorities, or the local communities or individuals) often are the key determinant as to whether an event becomes a disaster or whether people survive and progress. How prepared people are and their mental state often affects the outcome of a hazard event.

Therefore it is important to empower the people who are going to experience hazards to be able to take control and responsibility for themselves. By engaging with locals, developing a community spirit with strong leaders, people have a better chance of survival and also potential to improve after an event, during reconstruction.

2.       There was also a call for more holistic research and well-rounded individuals in disaster preparedness and response. The nature of research requires people to have a narrow focus in their repertoire. However, in practice, more people with a breadth and depth of knowledge are needed.

 

3.       Communication between specialities and researchers are needed, as well as between researchers and practitioners.  We need to learn from each other. Researchers need to communicate their results to the practitioners, and practitioners need to communicate to the researchers what they need to be investigated.

Overall the workshop was incredibly informative, dynamic and interesting. Emphasis was put onto discussions in the sessions and networking at lunch and break times. The people were friendly and open to discussion and sharing of knowledge. It has encouraged and reinforced my aim to work in this field in my future career (post-PhD) and provided a well-needed push at this half-way point in my PhD.

I wish I could attend next year’s workshop, but my PhD funding won’t stretch far enough. I will just have to put together a great conference next year with Joel Gill (King’s College London) and Melanie Duncan (UCL) on the topic of cascading hazards. Watch this space for further details….

Upcoming Conferences

Some upcoming conferences this year dealing with natural hazards are listed below. All descriptions of the conferences are taken directly from the website advertising the conference. Of particular note is the Beijing conference which will have a session dedicated to cascading hazards.

Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop

Since 1975, the Natural Hazards Center has hosted the Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop for 400 federal, state, and local emergency officials; representatives of nonprofit and humanitarian organizations; hazards researchers; disaster consultants; and others dedicated to alleviating the impacts of disasters.

37th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Application Workshop
Saturday, July 14 through Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Omni Interlocken Resort
Broomfield, Colorado

The International Research Committee on Disasters Researchers Meeting and the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association Practitioners Meeting will immediately follow the main Workshop from Tuesday, July 17 through Wednesday, July 18.

The Third Conference of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society)

Beijing Normal University (BNU) in Beijing, China, on Sept. 7-9, 2012. The theme of the conference is “From surprise to rationality: Managing unprecedented large-scale disasters”.

In recent years, there have been increasing number of large-scale disasters (LSDs) occurring around the world, among which there have been some of the worst cases ever in history, e.g. the “3.11” Tohoku earthquake in Japan. The fact of rising numbers of major natural disasters and increasing losses claimed despite of years of efforts devoted to natural disaster risk reduction has resulted in wide concern about the traditional approaches of coping with natural disasters. Particularly, the frequent arrival of large-scale disasters that exceed local coping capacity urges new paradigms of risk management. The 3rd Conference of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management aims to promote focused discussion on the Integrated Risk Governance issues for large-scale disasters. Researchers in the field of disaster risk research are invited to gather in Beijing from developed countries from North America, Europe and East Asia, and from developing countries from Asia, Africa and South America. They shall spend 3 days in intensive discussion on the scientific, technical, economic, financial, and educational issues regarding large-scale disasters. The ultimate purpose is to find new approaches to coping with natural disasters, further filling the gap between science and implementation, and enhancing collective decision-making.

 

8th International Conference on Risk Analysis and Hazard Mitigation

19 - 21 September, 2012

Island of Brac, Croatia

Risk Analysis 2012 is the eighth international conference on risk analysis and hazard mitigation. Covering a series of important topics of current research interest and with many practical applications, the conference is concerned with all aspects of risk analysis and hazard mitigation, associated with both natural and anthropogenic hazards.

International Conference on Hazards & Disasters 2012

20-21 September 2012

Negombo, Sri Lanka

The ICRD/ ICAS joint Conference  on Hazards & Disasters 2012 offers a valuable opportunity to network with colleagues from many countries who share the same goals. Scientists and experts in hazards and disaster risk management are invited to participate in this International Conference on Hazards & Disasters 2012.

Session themes for the conference cover a rich and diverse range of research topics. We hope these sessions will bring researchers from across the globe together to discuss broad questions of common interest and provide a platform to establish relationships with new colleagues. You will be enlightened with innovative ideas and solutions at Hazards & Disasters 2012 and take initiatives to forge better solutions to reduce future risks and threats of hazards.

Matrix of multi-hazards

A while ago I created a matrix table to get clear in my mind the links between hazards. The result is displayed below. The table should be read from left to right. The primary hazard is listed in the vertical far left column, while the secondary hazard it triggers is listed along the top horizontal row.

It is by no means a complete or definitive guide to multi-hazards, but is a useful tool for trying to visualise the connections. If anyone has any suggestions to alter the table, I would be glad to hear them.

	Earthquake	Volcano	Flood	Tsunami	Landslide	Avalanche	Lahar	Mudflow	Hurricane
Earthquake		Shaking = gaps for magma		Displacement of water	Shaking	Shaking
Volcano	Eruption force		Glacier burst	Displacement of water	Flank collapse	Eruption/ shaking of snow on top	Tephra (+ melting)	Tephra (+ melting)	Tephra (?)
Flood					Undercutting		Entrainment of material	Entrainment of material
Tsunami			Water onto land
Landslide		Pressure change on flank	Block and break of river/lake	Displacement of water				Provision of material
Avalanche			Damming/ burst and melting	Displacement of water			Provision of transport	Provision of transport
Lahar			Provision of liquid
Mudflow			Provision of liquid
Hurricane	Pressure changes (?)	Water into gaps into magma	Heavy precipitation		Saturation of slopes		Heavy precipitation	Heavy precipitation

At the EGU, Joel Gill presented a much more robust matrix of multi-hazards. He intends to publish the results by the end of the summer, so watch this space for updates...

EGU 2012

In 2011 I attended the European Geophysical Union (EGU) in Vienna for the first time as a new PhD student. In all of the presentation and poster sessions for natural hazards, only a handful dealt with multiple natural hazards. And of this handful, only a few discussed or mentioned the cascading or linked effect of multiple hazards.

Kevin Fleming as manager of the MATRIX project outlaid a plan to research many issues associated with multi-hazards. This included assessing their relationships, their cascading effects and the effect of temporal scale on vulnerability in successive hazard events.

Melanie Kappes was also in attendance to present the findings of her PhD on multiple hazards affecting mountain environments.

This year at the EGU, there was a whole session devoted to ‘Multi-type hazard and risk assessment’. It shows a shift in some researchers’ thinking towards a more holistic and less isolated way of dealing with natural hazards. I was very pleased to see it producing interesting presentations and posters, and also well attended. Of particular note in the session, was Joel Gill’s presentation on ‘Reviewing and visualising interaction relationships for natural hazards’. His presentation outlined a clear way of showing the relationships between hazards, representing how they affect the likelihood and predictability of the secondary hazard and how well these relationships are understood in the literature. I look forward to his work being published as I feel it will provide a key reference in any research studying linked and cascading hazards.

However, as I discussed with some of the attendees and presenters there at the time, there were very few presentations which dealt with the interconnectedness of hazards. Every presentation in the session dealt with multiple hazards; however, very few explored the connections and cascading effects of multiple hazards. It was postulated that perhaps a more consistent way of separating these research areas was needed in the literature.

It is encouraging that multiple hazard research has become more popular and we do need more research into this area. but in this blog I will now make a differentiation between multiple hazard research (where more than one hazard is studied, but each is considered mostly separately) and what I will refer to as multi-hazard research (where connections, relationships and cascading effects between hazards are the main focus). When I come to publish my research, I will make this distinction clear, and perhaps over time with more people researching multi-hazards, the difference between them and multiple hazards will become clearer and more established.