Rainfall thresholds of the debris flows based on various rainfall intensity types in Beijing

Author(s):  
Haizhi Wang ◽  
Qingli Zeng ◽  
Bing Xu ◽  
Luqing Zhang

Abstract Empirical rainfall thresholds derived from various types of rainfall intensities have widely used in characterizing rainfall conditions that cause debris flows and landslides. However, few works have studied the differences among these various thresholds, due to limited information on the instantaneous intensity triggering debris flows. The detail records of the storms on 21 July, 2012, 20 July, 2016, and 16 July, 2018, together with the occurrence time of debris flows, provide an opportunity to evaluate the thresholds based on various rainfall intensities. Based these data, a new rainfall threshold of debris flows is derived from the instantaneous rainfall intensity in Beijing. At the same time, the thresholds based on average rainfall intensities as used in most previous studies, including the average over the periods from the beginnings of rainfall to the occurrences of the debris flows and over the whole period of the rainstorms, are reconstructed. The result shows that the instantaneous rainfall threshold has a higher ability in separating the rainstorms inducing from those without reducing debris flows than those derived from average intensities, indicating a high accurate of the instantaneous threshold. Our data also indicate that the debris flows in Beijing should be triggered by the concert works of rainfall intensity and cumulative precipitation. Only when enough water to infiltrate, saturate, mobilize the debris sediments, and sufficient high water flows and surges caused by intensive storms to incorporate and retain the mobilized sediments, are satisfied simultaneously do the debris flows occur.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuang Liu ◽  
Kaiheng Hu ◽  
Qun Zhang ◽  
Shaojie Zhang ◽  
Xudong Hu ◽  
...  

The impacts of destructive earthquakes on rainfall thresholds for triggering the debris flows have not yet been well investigated, due to lacks of data. In this study, we have collected the debris-flow records from the Wenchuan, Lushan, and Jiuzhaigou earthquake-affected areas in Sichuan Province, China. By using a meteorological dataset with 3 h and 0.1° resolutions, the dimensionless effective rainfall and rainfall intensity-duration relationships were calculated as the possible thresholds for triggering the debris flows. The pre- and post-seismic thresholds were compared to evaluate the impacts of the various intensities of earthquakes. Our results indicate that the post-quake thresholds are much smaller than the pre-seismic ones. The dimensionless effective rainfall shows the impacts of the Wenchuan, Lushan, and Jiuzhaigou earthquakes to be ca. 26, 27, and 16%, respectively. The Wenchuan earthquake has the most significant effect on lowering the rainfall intensity-duration curve. Rainfall threshold changes related to the moment magnitude and focal depth are discussed as well. Generally, this work may lead to an improved post-quake debris-flow warning strategy especially in sparsely instrumented regions.


Author(s):  
Bappaditya Koley ◽  
Anindita Nath ◽  
Subhajit Saraswati ◽  
Kaushik Bandyopadhyay ◽  
Bidhan Chandra Ray

Land sliding is a perennial problem in the Eastern Himalayas. Out of 0.42 million km2 of Indian landmass prone to landslide, 42% fall in the North East Himalaya, specially Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalaya. Most of these landslides are triggered by excessive monsoon rainfall between June and October in almost every year. Various attempts in the global scenario have been made to establish rainfall thresholds in terms of intensity – duration of antecedent rainfall models on global, regional and local scale for triggering of the landslide. This paper describes local aspect of rainfall threshold for landslides based on daily rainfall data in and around north Sikkim road corridor region. Among 210 Landslides occurring from 2010 to 2016 were studied to analyze rainfall thresholds. Out of the 210 landslides, however, only 155 Landslides associated with rainfall data which were analyzed to yield a threshold relationship between rainfall intensity-duration and landslide initiation. The threshold relationship determined fits to lower boundary of the Landslide triggering rainfall events is I = 4.045 D - 0.25 (I=rainfall intensity (mm/h) and D=duration in (h)), revealed that for rainfall event of short time (24 h) duration with a rainfall intensity of 1.82 mm/h, the risk of landslides on this road corridor of the terrain is expected to be high. It is also observed that an intensity of 58 mm and 139 mm for 10-day and 20-day antecedent rainfall are required for the initiation of landslides in the study area. This threshold would help in improvement on traffic guidance and provide safety to the travelling tourists in this road corridor during the monsoon.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Frattini ◽  
Gianluca Sala ◽  
Camilla Lanfranconi ◽  
Giulia Rusconi ◽  
Giovanni Crosta

<p>Rainfall is one of the most significant triggering factors for shallow landslides. The early warning for such phenomena requires the definition of a threshold based on a critical rainfall condition that may lead to diffuse landsliding. The developing of these thresholds is frequently done through empirical or statistical approaches that aim at identifying thresholds between rainfall events that triggered or non-triggered landslides. Such approaches present several problems related to the identification of the exact amount of rainfall that triggered landslides, the local geo-environmental conditions at the landslide site, and the minimum rainfall amount used to define the non-triggering events. Furthermore, these thresholds lead to misclassifications (false negative or false positive) that always induce costs for the society. The aim of this research is to address these limitations, accounting for classification costs in order to select the optimal thresholds for landslide risk management.</p><p>Starting from a database of shallow landslides occurred during five regional-scale rainfall events in the Italian Central Alps, we extracted the triggering rainfall intensities by adjusting rain gouge data with weather radar data. This adjustment significantly improved the information regarding the rainfall intensity at the landslide site and, although an uncertainty related to the exact timing of occurrence has still remained. Therefore, we identified the rainfall thresholds through the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) approach, by identifying the optimal rainfall intensity that separates triggering and non-triggering events. To evaluate the effect related to the application of different minimum rainfall for non-triggering events, we have adopted three different values obtaining similar results, thus demonstrating that the ROC approach is not sensitive to the choice of the minimum rainfall threshold. In order to include the effect of misclassification costs we have developed cost-sensitive rainfall threshold curves by using cost-curve approach (Drummond and Holte 2000). As far as we know, this is the first attempt to build a cost-sensitive rainfall threshold for landslides that allows to explicitly account for misclassification costs. For the development of the cost-sensitive threshold curve, we had to define a reference cost scenario in which we have quantified several cost items for both missed alarms and false alarms. By using this scenario, the cost-sensitive rainfall threshold results to be lower than the ROC threshold to minimize the missed alarms, the costs of which are seven times greater than the false alarm costs. Since the misclassification costs could vary according to different socio-economic contexts and emergency organization, we developed different extreme scenarios to evaluate the sensitivity of misclassification costs on the rainfall thresholds. In the scenario with maximum false-alarm cost and minimum missed-alarm cost, the rainfall threshold increases in order to minimize the false alarms. Conversely, the rainfall thresholds decreases in the scenario with minimum false-alarm cost and maximum missed-alarm costs. We found that the range of variation between the curves of these extreme scenarios is as much as half an order of magnitude.</p>


Landslides ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Sala ◽  
Camilla Lanfranconi ◽  
Paolo Frattini ◽  
Giulia Rusconi ◽  
Giovanni B. Crosta

AbstractThe risk management of rainfall-induced landslides requires reliable rainfall thresholds to issue early warning alerts. The practical application of these thresholds often leads to misclassifications, either false negative or false positive, which induce costs for the society. Since missed-alarm (false negative) and false-alarm (false positive) cost may be significantly different, it is necessary to find an optimal threshold that accounts for and minimises such costs, tuning the false-alarm and missed-alarm rates. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to develop cost-sensitive rainfall thresholds, and we also analyse several factors that produce uncertainty, such as the accuracy of rainfall intensity values at landslide location, the time of occurrence, the minimum rainfall amount to define the non-triggering event, and the variability of cost scenarios. Starting from a detailed mapping of landslides that occurred during five large-scale rainfall events in the Italian Central Alps, we first developed rainfall threshold curves with a ROC-based approach by using both rain gauge and bias-adjusted weather radar data. Then, based on a reference cost scenario in which we quantified several cost items for both missed alarms and false alarms, we developed cost-sensitive rainfall threshold curves by using cost-curve approach (Drummond and Holte 2000). Finally, we studied the sensitivity of cost items. The study confirms how important is the information regarding rainfall intensity at the landslide site for the development of rainfall thresholds. Although the use of bias-corrected radar strongly improves these values, a large uncertainty related to the exact time of landslide occurrence still remains, negatively affecting the analysis. Accounting for the different missed-alarm and false-alarm misclassification costs is important because different combinations of these costs make an increase or decrease of the rainfall thresholds convenient. In our reference cost scenario, the most convenient threshold is lower than ROC-based thresholds because it seeks to minimise the number of missed alarms, whereas the missed-alarm costs are almost seven times greater than false-alarm costs. However, for different cost scenarios, threshold may vary significantly, as much as half an order of magnitude.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srikrishnan Siva Subramanian ◽  
Ali. P. Yunus ◽  
Faheed Jasin ◽  
Minu Treesa Abraham ◽  
Neelima Sathyam ◽  
...  

Abstract The frequency of unprecedented extreme precipitation events is increasing, and consequently, catastrophic debris flows occur in regions worldwide. Rapid velocity and long-runout distances of debris flow induce massive loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Despite extensive research, understanding the initiation mechanisms and defining early warning thresholds for extreme-precipitation-induced debris flows remain a challenge. Due to the nonavailability of extreme events in the past, statistical models cannot determine thresholds from historical datasets. Here, we develop a numerical model to analyze the initiation and runout of extreme-precipitation-induced runoff-generated debris flows and derive the Intensity-Duration (ID) rainfall threshold. We choose the catastrophic debris flow on 6 August 2020 in Pettimudi, Kerala, India, for our analysis. Our model satisfactorily predicts the accumulation thickness (7 m to 8 m) and occurrence time of debris flow compared to the benchmark. Results reveal that the debris flow was rapid, traveling with a maximum velocity of 9 m/s for more than 9 minutes. The ID rainfall threshold defined for the event suggests earlier thresholds are not valid for debris flow triggered by extreme precipitation. The methodology we develop in this study is helpful to derive ID rainfall thresholds for debris flows without historical data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 1395-1409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua-Li Pan ◽  
Yuan-Jun Jiang ◽  
Jun Wang ◽  
Guo-Qiang Ou

Abstract. Debris flows are natural disasters that frequently occur in mountainous areas, usually accompanied by serious loss of lives and properties. One of the most commonly used approaches to mitigate the risk associated with debris flows is the implementation of early warning systems based on well-calibrated rainfall thresholds. However, many mountainous areas have little data regarding rainfall and hazards, especially in debris-flow-forming regions. Therefore, the traditional statistical analysis method that determines the empirical relationship between rainstorms and debris flow events cannot be effectively used to calculate reliable rainfall thresholds in these areas. After the severe Wenchuan earthquake, there were plenty of deposits deposited in the gullies, which resulted in several debris flow events. The triggering rainfall threshold has decreased obviously. To get a reliable and accurate rainfall threshold and improve the accuracy of debris flow early warning, this paper developed a quantitative method, which is suitable for debris flow triggering mechanisms in meizoseismal areas, to identify rainfall threshold for debris flow early warning in areas with a scarcity of data based on the initiation mechanism of hydraulic-driven debris flow. First, we studied the characteristics of the study area, including meteorology, hydrology, topography and physical characteristics of the loose solid materials. Then, the rainfall threshold was calculated by the initiation mechanism of the hydraulic debris flow. The comparison with other models and with alternate configurations demonstrates that the proposed rainfall threshold curve is a function of the antecedent precipitation index (API) and 1 h rainfall. To test the proposed method, we selected the Guojuanyan gully, a typical debris flow valley that during the 2008–2013 period experienced several debris flow events, located in the meizoseismal areas of the Wenchuan earthquake, as a case study. The comparison with other threshold models and configurations shows that the selected approach is the most promising starting point for further studies on debris flow early warning systems in areas with a scarcity of data.


Author(s):  
Carissa A. Raymond ◽  
◽  
Luke McGuire ◽  
Ann M. Youberg

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Monsieurs ◽  
Olivier Dewitte ◽  
Alain Demoulin

Abstract. Rainfall threshold determination is a pressing issue in the landslide scientific community. While major improvements have been made towards more reproducible techniques for the identification of triggering conditions for landsliding, the now well-established rainfall intensity or event-duration thresholds for landsliding suffer from several limitations. Here, we propose a new approach of the frequentist method for threshold definition based on satellite-derived antecedent rainfall estimates directly coupled with landslide susceptibility data. Adopting a bootstrap statistical technique for the identification of threshold uncertainties at different exceedance probability levels, it results in thresholds expressed as AR = (α±Δα)⋅S(β±Δβ), where AR is antecedent rainfall (mm), S is landslide susceptibility, α and β are scaling parameters, and Δα and Δβ are their uncertainties. The main improvements of this approach consist in (1) using spatially continuous satellite rainfall data, (2) giving equal weight to rainfall characteristics and ground susceptibility factors in the definition of spatially varying rainfall thresholds, (3) proposing an exponential antecedent rainfall function that involves past daily rainfall in the exponent to account for the different lasting effect of large versus small rainfall, (4) quantitatively exploiting the lower parts of the cloud of data points, most meaningful for threshold estimation, and (5) merging the uncertainty on landslide date with the fit uncertainty in a single error estimation. We apply our approach in the western branch of the East African Rift based on landslides that occurred between 2001 and 2018, satellite rainfall estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA 3B42 RT), and the continental-scale map of landslide susceptibility of Broeckx et al. (2018) and provide the first regional rainfall thresholds for landsliding in tropical Africa.


2017 ◽  
Vol 217 ◽  
pp. 23-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenlei Wei ◽  
Yuequan Shang ◽  
Yu Zhao ◽  
Pan Pan ◽  
Yuanjun Jiang

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosmina A. Bustami ◽  
Nor Azalina Rosli ◽  
Jethro Henry Adam ◽  
Kuan Pei Li

 In the process of a design rainfall, information on rainfall duration, average rainfall intensity and temporal rainfall pattern is important. This study focuses on developing a temporal rainfall pattern for the Southern region of Sarawak since temporal pattern for Sarawak is yet to be available in the Malaysian Urban Storm Water Management Manual (MSMA), which publishes temporal pattern for design storms only for Peninsular Malaysia. The recommended technique by the Australian Rainfall and Runoff (AR&R) known as the ‘Average Variability Method’ and method in Hydrological Procedure No.1-1982 are used to derive design rainfall temporal pattern for the study. Rainfall data of 5 minutes interval from year 1998 to year 2006 for 7 selected rainfall stations in the selected region is obtained from Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID). The temporal rainfall patterns developed are for 10 minutes,15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes, 180 minutes and 360 minutes duration. The results show that Southern region of Sarawak has an exclusive rainfall pattern, which is different from the pattern developed for Peninsular Malaysia.


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