scholarly journals Integrated Assessment of Natural Hazards, Including Climate Change’s Influences, for Cultural Heritage Sites: The Case of the Historic Centre of Rethymno in Greece

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ravankhah ◽  
Rosmarie de Wit ◽  
Athanasios V. Argyriou ◽  
Angelos Chliaoutakis ◽  
Maria João Revez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Hazard Assessment ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Hazard Analysis ◽  
Sudden Onset ◽  
Assessment Procedure ◽  
Northern Coast ◽  
Historic Centre

Abstract Within the framework of disaster risk management, this article proposes an interdisciplinary method for the analysis of multiple natural hazards, including climate change’s influences, in the context of cultural heritage. A taxonomy of natural hazards applicable to cultural heritage was developed based on the existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks. Sudden-onset hazards, such as earthquakes and floods, and slow-onset hazards, such as wetting–drying cycles and biological contamination, were incorporated into the hazard assessment procedure. Future alteration of conditions due to climate change, such as change in heat waves’ duration, was also taken into account. The proposed hazard assessment framework was applied to the case of the Historic Centre of Rethymno, a city on the northern coast of the island of Crete in Greece, to identify, analyze, and prioritize the hazards that have the potential to cause damage to the center’s historic structures. The assessment procedure includes climate model projections, GIS spatial modeling and mapping, and finally a hazard analysis matrix to enable the sharing of a better understanding of multiple hazards with the stakeholders. The results can facilitate decision making by providing the vulnerability and risk analysis with the nature and spatial distribution of the significant hazards within the study area and its setting.

scholarly journals Extremal Dependence between Temperature and Ozone over the Continental U.S.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pakawat Phalitnonkiat ◽  
Wenxiu Sun ◽  
Mircea D. Grigoriu ◽  
Peter G. M. Hess ◽  
Gennady Samorodnitsky ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Model ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Strong Dependence ◽  
Measurement Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Temperature Extremes ◽  
Measured Temperature ◽  
Extremal Dependence ◽  
Year 2000

Abstract. The co-occurrence of heat waves and pollution events and the resulting high mortality rates emphasizes the importance of the co-occurrence of pollution and temperature extremes. Through the use of extreme value theory and other statistical methods ozone and temperature extremes and their joint occurrence are analyzed over the United States during the summer months (JJA) using Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) measurement data and simulations of the present and future climate and chemistry in the Community Earth System Model (CESM1) CAM4-chem. Three simulations using CAM4-chem were analyzed: the Chemistry Climate Model Initiative (CCMI) reference experiment using specified dynamics (REFC1SD) between 1992–2010, a 25-year present-day simulation branched off the CCMI REFC2 simulation in the year 2000 and a 25-year future simulation branched off the CCMI REFC2 simulation in 2100. The latter two simulations differed in their concentration of carbon dioxide (representative of the years 2000 and 2100) but were otherwise identical. A new metric is developed to measure the joint extremal dependence of ozone and temperature by evaluating the spectral dependence of their extremes. Two regions of the U.S. give the strongest measured extreme dependence of ozone and temperature: the northeast and the southeast. The simulations do not capture the relationship between temperature and ozone over the northeast but do simulate a strong dependence of ozone on extreme temperatures over the southeast. In general, the simulations of ozone and temperature do not capture the width of the measured temperature and ozone distributions. While on average the future increase in the 90th percentile temperature and the 90th percentile ozone slightly exceed the mean increase over the continental U.S., in many regions the width of the temperature and ozone distributions decrease. The location of future increases in the tails of the ozone distribution are weakly related to those of temperature with a correlation of 0.3.

Drivers of midlatitude extreme heat waves revealed by analogues and machine learning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Miloshevich ◽  
Dario Lucente ◽  
Corentin Herbert ◽  
Freddy Bouchet
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Markov Chain ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Return Time ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Teleconnection Patterns ◽  
Long Term Effect ◽  
Westerly Flow ◽  
Composite Maps

<p>One of the big challenges today is to appropriately describe heat waves, which are relevant due to their impact on human society. Common characteristics in mid-latitudes involve meanders of the westerly flow and concomitant large anticyclonic anomalies of the geopotential field. These anomalies form the so-called teleconnection patterns, and thus it is natural to ask how robust such structures are in various models and how much data we require to make statistically significant inferences. In addition, it is natural to ask what are the precursor phenomena that would improve forecasting capabilities of the heat waves. In particular, what kind of long term effect does the soil moisture have and how it compares to the respective quantitative contribution to the predictability of the teleconnection patterns.</p><p> </p><p>In order to answer these questions we perform various types of regression on a climate model. We construct the composite maps of the geopotential height at 500 hPa and estimate return times of heatwaves of different severity. Of particular interest to us is a committor function, which is essentially a probability a heat wave occurs<span> given the current state of the system. Committor functions can be efficiently computed using the analogue method, which involves learning a Markov chain that produces synthetic trajectories from the real trajectories. Alternatively they can be estimated using machine learning approach. Finally we compare the composite maps in real dynamics to the ones generated by the Markov chain and observe how well the rare events are sampled, for instance to allow extending the return time plots. </span></p>

Cultural Heritage Exposed to Natural Hazards: The Case Study of the Convent of San Domenico in Maiori

2021 ◽  
pp. 258-265
Author(s):  
Raffaele Landolfo ◽  
Cristiana Tarantino ◽  
Lucrezia Cascini ◽  
Francesco Portioli
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Natural Hazards

scholarly journals Exposure Indices of Extreme Wind-Driven Rain Events for Built Heritage

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Allan Orr ◽  
May Cassar
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Exposure Assessment ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Prolonged Exposure ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Assessment Procedure ◽  
Statistical Confidence ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Rain Events ◽  
Two Stages

Building performance and material change of cultural heritage in urban areas are negatively impacted by wind-driven rain (WDR). The frequency and intensity of WDR exposure are modified by climate change. Current approaches to exposure assessment emphasise prolonged exposure. Here, we propose indices to represent the exposure of cultural heritage to extreme WDR events. The indices are derived in two stages: (1) time-binning of long-term exposure, and (2) statistical representation of the occurrence of infrequent but intense events by fitting to the Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. A comparison to an existing exposure assessment procedure demonstrates that the proposed indices better represent shorter, more intense, and more consistent WDR events. Indices developed for seasons had greater statistical confidence than those developed for annual exposure. One index is contextualised within a model of a gutter on a terraced building: this converts the index from a measure of exposure to potential impact. This evaluation demonstrated the importance of maintenance to reduce the potential impact of WDR events. This work has direct and indirect implications for developing robust assessment procedures for cultural heritage exposure to extreme weather events.

Preservation of Cultural Heritage of Sant’Agata de’ Goti (Italy) from Natural Hazards

2014 ◽  
pp. 421-425
Author(s):  
Anna Scotto di Santolo ◽  
Filomena de Silva ◽  
Domenico Calcaterra ◽  
Francesco Silvestri
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Natural Hazards

scholarly journals Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis: High Performance Computing for Massive Scale Inundation Simulations

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Gibbons ◽  
Stefano Lorito ◽  
Jorge Macías ◽  
Finn Løvholt ◽  
Jacopo Selva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Performance Computing ◽  
Hazard Assessment ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Hazard Analysis ◽  
Tsunami Hazard ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Tsunami Inundation ◽  
Inundation Modelling ◽  
Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis ◽  
Performance Computing

Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis (PTHA) quantifies the probability of exceeding a specified inundation intensity at a given location within a given time interval. PTHA provides scientific guidance for tsunami risk analysis and risk management, including coastal planning and early warning. Explicit computation of site-specific PTHA, with an adequate discretization of source scenarios combined with high-resolution numerical inundation modelling, has been out of reach with existing models and computing capabilities, with tens to hundreds of thousands of moderately intensive numerical simulations being required for exhaustive uncertainty quantification. In recent years, more efficient GPU-based High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities, together with efficient GPU-optimized shallow water type models for simulating tsunami inundation, have now made local long-term hazard assessment feasible. A workflow has been developed with three main stages: 1) Site-specific source selection and discretization, 2) Efficient numerical inundation simulation for each scenario using the GPU-based Tsunami-HySEA numerical tsunami propagation and inundation model using a system of nested topo-bathymetric grids, and 3) Hazard aggregation. We apply this site-specific PTHA workflow here to Catania, Sicily, for tsunamigenic earthquake sources in the Mediterranean. We illustrate the workflows of the PTHA as implemented for High-Performance Computing applications, including preliminary simulations carried out on intermediate scale GPU clusters. We show how the local hazard analysis conducted here produces a more fine-grained assessment than is possible with a regional assessment. However, the new local PTHA indicates somewhat lower probabilities of exceedance for higher maximum inundation heights than the available regional PTHA. The local hazard analysis takes into account small-scale tsunami inundation features and non-linearity which the regional-scale assessment does not incorporate. However, the deterministic inundation simulations neglect some uncertainties stemming from the simplified source treatment and tsunami modelling that are embedded in the regional stochastic approach to inundation height estimation. Further research is needed to quantify the uncertainty associated with numerical inundation modelling and to properly propagate it onto the hazard results, to fully exploit the potential of site-specific hazard assessment based on massive simulations.

Multi-hazard disaster risk identification for World Cultural Heritage sites in seismic zones

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ravankhah ◽  
Michael Schmidt ◽  
Thomas Will
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Risk Identification ◽  
Earthquake Risk ◽  
Seismic Events ◽  
Assessment Procedure ◽  
Content Type ◽  
World Cultural Heritage ◽  
Secondary Hazards

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated multi-risk identification procedure for World Cultural Heritage (WCH) sites exposed to seismic events, while considering characteristics of disasters from earthquakes in a multi-hazard context on one side and particular aspects of WCH (e.g. outstanding universal values and associated condition of authenticity and integrity) on the other. Design/methodology/approach An interdisciplinary review of current relevant approaches, methods, and practices is conducted through the existing literature of disaster risk management, heritage conservation, and seismology. Furthermore, a document analysis of concrete cases affected by seismic events supports concepts and the procedure. Findings This paper results in a methodology of identifying multi-risk of disasters induced by earthquakes. A bow-tie analysis diagram in combination with a risk identification matrix is developed for illustrating a multiple emergency scenario in identifying possible impacts of earthquakes’ primary effects, secondary hazards, and human-threats on tangible and intangible attributes of cultural properties. Practical implications The research aims to provide specialists and practitioners from multiple sectors engaged in pre-disaster risk mitigation and preparedness plan for cultural heritage with a practical risk identification tool. The proposed method, in a multiple hazard context, intends to enhance risk assessment procedure for determining more appropriate risk reduction strategies in the decision-making process. Originality/value This paper, through emphasising “earthquake disaster risk” rather than “earthquake risk”, illuminates the significance of quake-followed secondary hazards, potential human-induced hazards and human errors in the risk identification process, due to the fact that while a disaster may begin with a quake, its full scope might be triggered by a combination of the mentioned potential threats.

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