scholarly journals Global detection of rainfall-triggered landslide clusters

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1433-1444
Author(s):  
Susanne A. Benz ◽  
Philipp Blum

Abstract. An increasing awareness of the cost of landslides on the global economy and of the associated loss of human life has led to the development of various global landslide databases. However, these databases typically report landslide events instead of individual landslides, i.e., a group of landslides with a common trigger and reported by media, citizens and/or government officials as a single unit. The latter results in significant cataloging and reporting biases. To counteract these biases, this study aims to identify clusters of landslide events that were triggered by the same rainfall event. An algorithm is developed that finds a series of landslide events that (a) is continuous with no more than 2 d between individual events and where (b) precipitation at the location of an individual event correlates with precipitation of at least one other event. The developed algorithm is applied to the Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) maintained by NASA. The results show that more than 40 % of all landslide events are connected to at least one other event and that 14 % of all studied landslide events are actually part of a landslide cluster consisting of at least 10 events and up to 108 events in 1 d. Duration of the detected clusters also varies greatly from 1 to 24 d. Our study intends to enhance our understanding of landslide clustering and thus will assist in the development of improved, internationally streamlined mitigation strategies for rainfall-related landslide clusters.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne A. Benz ◽  
Philipp Blum

Abstract. An increasing awareness of the cost of landslides on the global economy and of the associated loss of human life, has led to the development of various global landslide databases. However, these databases typically report landslide events instead of individual landslides, i.e. a group of landslides with a common trigger and reported by media, citizens and/or government officials as a single unit. The latter results in significant cataloging and reporting biases. To counteract this biases, this study aims to identify clusters of landslide events that were triggered by the same rainfall event. Here the developed algorithm is applied to the Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) maintained by NASA. The results show that more than 40 % of all landslide events are connected to at least one other event, and that 14 % of all studied landslide events are actually part of a landslide cluster consisting of at least 10 events. However, in a more regional analysis this number ranges from 30 % for the West Coast of North America to 3 % in the Himalaya Region. The cluster with most landslide events in a day is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with 108 events on 6th April 2010. In contrast, the longest running cluster was observed on the West Coast of North America with 132 events occurring in an area of over 120,000 km2 during 24 days in December 2015. Our study intends to enhance our understanding of landslide clustering and thus will assist in the development of improved, internationally streamlined mitigation strategies for rainfall related landslide clusters.


Author(s):  
Francisco Gutiérrez

Sinkholes or dolines are closed depressions characteristic of terrains underlain by soluble rocks (carbonates and/or evaporites). They may be related to the differential dissolutional lowering of the ground surface (solution sinkholes) or to subsidence induced by subsurface karstification (subsidence sinkholes). Three main subsidence mechanisms may operate individually or in combination: collapse, sagging, and suffosion. Subsidence sinkholes may cause severe damage to human built structures, and the occurrence of catastrophic collapse sinkholes may lead to the loss of human life. Dissolution and subsidence processes involved in the development of subsidence sinkholes are controlled by a wide range of natural and anthropogenic factors. Recent literature reviews reveal that the vast majority of the damaging sinkholes are induced by human activities (e.g., water table decline, water input to the ground). The main steps in sinkhole hazard and risk assessment include: (a) construction of comprehensive sinkhole inventories and detailed sinkhole characterization; (b) development of independently tested sinkhole susceptibility and hazard models, preferably incorporating magnitude and frequency relationships; (c) assessing risk combining hazard and vulnerability data. Sinkhole risk models may be used as the basis to perform cost-benefit analyses that allow the cost-effectiveness of different mitigation strategies to be estimated. Three main concepts may be applied to reduce sinkhole risk: (a) avoiding sinkholes and sinkhole-prone areas (preventive planning); (b) diminishing the activity of dissolution and/or subsidence processes (hazard reduction); (c) incorporating special designs in the structures (vulnerability reduction). Although our capabilities to investigate sinkhole hazards and reduce the associated risks will continue to increase in the near future, the damage related to sinkholes will also increase, largely due to the adverse changes caused by human activities on the karst environments and the ineffective knowledge transfer between scientists, technicians, and decision-makers. This article presents the processes and factors involved in sinkhole development and reviews the main approaches used to assess and manage sinkhole hazards and risks.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Yuli Anwar ◽  
Dahlar .

Abstract. One of the advances in information technology that now has changed the outlook and human life, business process and business strategy of an institution is the internet. The internet is a very large networks that connected to computers and serves throughout the world in one centralized network. With the internet we can access data and information anytime and anywhere.    As one provider of high-speed data communications services and the pioneer of the internet network service provider in Indonesia that provides integrated services, as well as one of the pioneer development of internet services that provide extensive services in the building and apply it throughout Indonesia. Indosat ready to seize opportunities for sustainable growth of business spectrum are still sprawling Indonesia.    Therefore, Indosat continues to focus on the development of increased efforts to provide the best service for customers of Indosat. Indosat will continue to develop and expand network coverage and a larger investment that the company will achieve excellence in the field of integrated telecommunications services.    Ranking by region of the IP Providers can be seen by grouping IP Providers, and management over IP Providers prefer to choose providers based on where it orginates as an example for the region of the U.S if it will be preferred providers that come from U.S. providers.With the commencement of the internet network optimization start early in 2008 with the selection of the appropriate IP Upstream Provider criteria, it is up to date according to data obtained from Indosat, seen any significant changes to the cost of purchasing capacity of the IP Upstream.    Based on the data obtained that until Q3 or September 2008, the number of IP Upstream Providers that previously there were 20 to 10 IP Upstream Provider, IP Transit Price total decrease of 11% to the price of IP Transit Price / Mbps there is a decrease of 78%, while from the capacity bandwith an increase of 301% capacity from 2008.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Karagiannakis

This paper deals with state of the art risk and resilience calculations for industrial plants. Resilience is a top priority issue on the agenda of societies due to climate change and the all-time demand for human life safety and financial robustness. Industrial plants are highly complex systems containing a considerable number of equipment such as steel storage tanks, pipe rack-piping systems, and other installations. Loss Of Containment (LOC) scenarios triggered by past earthquakes due to failure on critical components were followed by severe repercussions on the community, long recovery times and great economic losses. Hence, facility planners and emergency managers should be aware of possible seismic damages and should have already established recovery plans to maximize the resilience and minimize the losses. Seismic risk assessment is the first step of resilience calculations, as it establishes possible damage scenarios. In order to have an accurate risk analysis, the plant equipment vulnerability must be assessed; this is made feasible either from fragility databases in the literature that refer to customized equipment or through numerical calculations. Two different approaches to fragility assessment will be discussed in this paper: (i) code-based Fragility Curves (FCs); and (ii) fragility curves based on numerical models. A carbon black process plant is used as a case study in order to display the influence of various fragility curve realizations taking their effects on risk and resilience calculations into account. Additionally, a new way of representing the total resilience of industrial installations is proposed. More precisely, all possible scenarios will be endowed with their weighted recovery curves (according to their probability of occurrence) and summed together. The result is a concise graph that can help stakeholders to identify critical plant equipment and make decisions on seismic mitigation strategies for plant safety and efficiency. Finally, possible mitigation strategies, like structural health monitoring and metamaterial-based seismic shields are addressed, in order to show how future developments may enhance plant resilience. The work presented hereafter represents a highly condensed application of the research done during the XP-RESILIENCE project, while more detailed information is available on the project website https://r.unitn.it/en/dicam/xp-resilience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-203
Author(s):  
Dong Yan ◽  
Paolo Davide Farah ◽  
Tivadar Ötvös ◽  
Ivana Gaskova

Abstract Considering the fact that its existence is abundant while maintaining the ability to generate freshwater while burning, methane hydrates have been classified as sources of sustainable energy. China currently maintains an international role in developing technology meant to explore offshore methane hydrates buried under the mud of the seabed, their primary laboratory being the South China Sea. However, such a process does not come without its hazards and fatal consequences, ranging from the destruction of the flora and fauna, the general environment, and—the greatest hazard of all—the cost of human life. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter ‘UNCLOS’), being an important international legal regime and instrument, has assigned damage control during the exploration of methane hydrates, as being the responsibilities and liability of individual sovereign states and corporations. China adopted the Deep Seabed Mining Law (hereinafter the DSM Law) on 26 February 2016, which came into force on the 1 of May 2016; a regulation providing the legal framework also for the Chinese government’s role in methane hydrate exploratory activities. This article examines the role of the DSM Law and its provisions, as well as several international documents intended to prevent transboundary environmental harm from arising, as a result of offshore methane hydrate extraction. Despite the obvious risk of harm to the environment, the DSM Law has made great strides in regulating exploratory activities so as to meet the criteria of the UNCLOS. However, this article argues that neither the UNCLOS nor the DSM Law are adequately prepared to address transboundary harm triggered by the exploitation of offshore methane hydrates. In particular, the technology of such extraction is still at an experimental stage, and potential risks remain uncertain—and even untraceable—for cross-jurisdictional claims. The article intends to seek available legal instruments or models, to overhaul the incapacity within the current governing framework, and offers suggestions supporting national and international legislative efforts towards protecting the environment during methane hydrate extraction.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Ji ◽  
Lanfa Liu ◽  
Manfred Buchroithner

Earthquake is one of the most devastating natural disasters that threaten human life. It is vital to retrieve the building damage status for planning rescue and reconstruction after an earthquake. In cases when the number of completely collapsed buildings is far less than intact or less-affected buildings (e.g., the 2010 Haiti earthquake), it is difficult for the classifier to learn the minority class samples, due to the imbalance learning problem. In this study, the convolutional neural network (CNN) was utilized to identify collapsed buildings from post-event satellite imagery with the proposed workflow. Producer accuracy (PA), user accuracy (UA), overall accuracy (OA), and Kappa were used as evaluation metrics. To overcome the imbalance problem, random over-sampling, random under-sampling, and cost-sensitive methods were tested on selected test A and test B regions. The results demonstrated that the building collapsed information can be retrieved by using post-event imagery. SqueezeNet performed well in classifying collapsed and non-collapsed buildings, and achieved an average OA of 78.6% for the two test regions. After balancing steps, the average Kappa value was improved from 41.6% to 44.8% with the cost-sensitive approach. Moreover, the cost-sensitive method showed a better performance on discriminating collapsed buildings, with a PA value of 51.2% for test A and 61.1% for test B. Therefore, a suitable balancing method should be considered when facing imbalance dataset to retrieve the distribution of collapsed buildings.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Asantha Senevirathna

 COVID-19 pandemic has become a major crisis in 2020. The pandemic has claimed thousands of lives and is spreading a negative economic impact around the global economy. The pandemic has caused a devastating impact on human life in many of the countries without a clear distinction among developed or developing nations. Sri Lanka is facing the heat of the pandemic gradually since January and has taken various measures to combat the situation. The COVID-19 pandemic forwarded a greater challenge to Sri Lanka since the country has faced various disasters in the recent past and question marks remain about the government’s response. The Sri Lankan government response to the current COVID-19 crisis has been largely successful and is ranked among the best responsive countries in the world. This paper discusses Sri Lanka’s strategies in dealing with COVID-19 pandemic and possible future challenges related to the issue.


Author(s):  
Valentyna Fostolovych ◽  
Tetiana Botsian

The permeability of all spheres of both economic activity and human life with digital technologies encourages the search for new marketing ideas necessary for the implementation of the product (goods, works and services).  Today's consumer has become more demanding both to the product itself and to the ways of presenting it.  Immersive technologies are becoming one of the tools that contribute to the formation of competitive advantages, especially the organization of business in the field of entertainment, as one of the areas of additional income in the field of hotel and restaurant services and marketing activities of enterprises.  Digital transformation leads to the search for new initiatives that will be a tool to meet customer needs and a way to reach wider market segments.  The process of digitalization must first be integrated into the economy of the whole state and the enterprise as a whole, and in all processes of production of goods, works and services.  Digital-transformation of domestic enterprises will help to obtain additional competitive advantages both in the domestic market and in the international market.  The formation of competitive advantages is associated not only with the maximum involvement of digital technologies in business.  It is important to choose such technologies that will be most effective in the implementation of a particular type of enterprise, under certain conditions and in a particular environment. The expediency of using immersive technologies as a marketing tool is undeniable.  However, in addition to tools, immersive technologies are important as a means of education, a separate milestone in the field of entertainment, a means of psychological influence and more.  That is, the impact of this tool on the level of competitiveness of the enterprise in the environment of the demanding consumer is manifested: in the form of reducing the cost of attracting the client; active covert promotion through their use; improving the quality of the presented product (goods, works, services); ensuring the elasticity of the enterprise to the needs and requirements of consumers; the transition of the enterprise to an innovative type of development and active digitalization.


Author(s):  
Viral Patel ◽  
Daanyaal Kapadia ◽  
Deval Ghevariya ◽  
Shiburaj Pappu

Citizens of the India face civic problems in their day-to-day lives. They resort to the one of many ways provided by the government to file their complaints. The grievance registration systems have evolved in many ways with the advancement in technologies to simplify the task. This paper presents the architecture of a Grievance redresser Application where the civilians can address any kind of complain which they are facing. The main focus of the project is about the pothole related complains. One of the most difficult task for the government officials to estimate the total time and material required to fill the pothole of widely spaced roads, this is one of the major problem faced by government authorities which leads to delaying in repairing the pothole and increased the cost to fill a particular pothole. This Application will give easy access to people to put their complaints towards the government.


Due to tremendous increase of vehicles in number leads to excessive congestion of vehicles at intersection of roads. It causing inconvenience to emergency vehicles like Ambulance and Fire brigade etc, ultimately which is the cost of human life To avoid this, Emergency Vehicles will have to give high priority to overcome from the congestion. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) is a network which is used to create a temporary communication among the vehicles. In this paper, priority based vehicle movement system is proposed to give high priority to emergency vehicles and establishing communication among the vehicles through VANET. Due to this high priority, there is no necessity to wait for the emergency vehicles at the traffic signals to get the green signal while communicating with traffic controller. In this paper, SUMO simulator is used for experimental analysis. The result indicates that the proposed methodology reduces the waiting time when compared to the existing system.


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