Reappraisal of gap analysis for effusive crises at Piton de la Fournaise

Effective and rapid effusive crisis response is necessary to mitigate the risks associated with lava flows that could threaten or inundate inhabited or visited areas. At Piton de la Fournaise (La Réunion, France), well-established protocols between Observatoire Volcanologique du Piton de la Fournaise – Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (OVPF-IPGP) and civil protection, and between scientists of a multinational array of institutes, allow effective tracking of eruptive crises and hazard management embracing all stakeholders. To assess the outstanding needs for such responses Tsang and Lindsay (J Appl Volcanol 9:9, 2020) applied a gap analysis to assess research gaps in terms of preparedness, response and recovery at 11 effusive centers, including Piton de la Fournaise. For Piton de la Fournaise, their gap analysis implied widespread gaps in the state of knowledge. However, their work relied on incomplete and erroneous data and methods, resulting in a gap analysis that significantly underrepresented this state of knowledge. We thus here re-build a correct database for Piton de la Fournaise, properly define the scope of an appropriate gap analysis, and provide a robust gap analysis, finding that there are, actually, very few gaps for Piton de la Fournaise. This is a result of the existence of a great quantity of published work in the peer-reviewed literature, as well as frequent reports documenting event impact in the local press and observatory reports. At Piton de la Fournaise, this latter (observatory-based) resource is largely due to the efforts of OVPF-IPGP who have a wealth of experience having responded to 81 eruptions since its creation in 1979 through the end of September 2021.Although welcome and necessary, especially if it is made by a group of scientists outside the local management of the volcanic risk (i.e., a neutral group), such gap analysis need to be sure to fully consider all available peer-reviewed literature, as well as newspaper reports, observatory releases and non-peer-reviewed eruption reports, so as to be complete and correct. Fundamentally, such an analysis needs to consider the information collected and produced by the volcano observatory charged with handling surveillance operations and reporting duties to civil protection for the volcano under analysis. As a very minimum, to ensure that a necessarily comprehensive and complete treatment of the scientific literature has been completed, we recommend that a third party expert, who is a recognized specialist in terms of research at the site considered, reviews and checks the material used for the gap analysis before final release of recommendations.

A Machine Learning Framework for Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment at the Regional Scale in Earthquake and Flood-Prone Areas

Communities are confronted with the rapidly growing impact of disasters, due to many factors that cause an increase in the vulnerability of society combined with an increase in hazardous events such as earthquakes and floods. The possible impacts of such events are large, also in developed countries, and governments and stakeholders must adopt risk reduction strategies at different levels of management stages of the communities. This study is aimed at proposing a sound qualitative multi-hazard risk analysis methodology for the assessment of combined seismic and hydraulic risk at the regional scale, which can assist governments and stakeholders in decision making and prioritization of interventions. The method is based on the use of machine learning techniques to aggregate large datasets made of many variables different in nature each of which carries information related to specific risk components and clusterize observations. The framework is applied to the case study of the Emilia Romagna region, for which the different municipalities are grouped into four homogeneous clusters ranked in terms of relative levels of combined risk. The proposed approach proves to be robust and delivers a very useful tool for hazard management and disaster mitigation, particularly for multi-hazard modeling at the regional scale.

Risk Chain and Key Hazard Management for Urban Rail Transit System Operation Based on Big Data Mining

With the promotion of the national transportation power strategy, super large operation networks have become an inevitable trend, and operational safety and risk management and control have become unavoidable problems. Existing safety management methods lack support from actual operational and production data, resulting in a lack of guidance of fault cause modes and risk chains. Large space is available to improve the breadth, depth, and accuracy of hazard source control. By mining multisource heterogeneous operation big data generated from subway operation, this study researches operation risk chain and refined management and control of key hidden dangers. First, it builds a data pool based on the operation status of several cities and then links them into a data lake to form an integrated data warehouse to find coupled and interactive rail transit operation risk chains. Second, it reveals and analyzes the risk correlation mechanisms behind the data and refines the key hazards in the risk chain. Finally, under the guidance of the risk chain, it deeply studies the technologies for refined control and governance of key hidden dangers. The results can truly transform rail transit operation safety from passive response to active defense, improving the special emergency rail transit operation plans, improving the current situation of low utilization of rail transit operation data, but high operation failure rate, and providing a basis for evidence-based formulation and revision of relevant industry standards and specifications.

30-year record of Himalaya mass-wasting reveals landscape perturbations by extreme events

In mountainous environments, quantifying the drivers of mass-wasting is fundamental for understanding landscape evolution and improving hazard management. Here, we quantify the magnitudes of mass-wasting caused by the Asia Summer Monsoon, extreme rainfall, and earthquakes in the Nepal Himalaya. Using a newly compiled 30-year mass-wasting inventory, we establish empirical relationships between monsoon-triggered mass-wasting and monsoon precipitation, before quantifying how other mass-wasting drivers perturb this relationship. We find that perturbations up to 5 times greater than that expected from the monsoon alone are caused by rainfall events with 5-to-30-year return periods and short-term (< 2 year) earthquake-induced landscape preconditioning. In 2015, the landscape preconditioning is strongly controlled by the topographic signature of the Gorkha earthquake, whereby high Peak Ground Accelerations coincident with high excess topography (rock volume above a landscape threshold angle) amplifies landscape damage. Furthermore, earlier earthquakes in 1934, 1988 and 2011 are not found to influence 2015 mass-wasting.

Application of the Coastal Hazard Wheel for Coastal Multi-Hazard Assessment and Management in the Guang-Dong-Hongkong-Macao Greater Bay Area

The coasts of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) are facing threats and challenges from rising sea levels, frequent extreme events and human intervention. In this study, the Coastal Hazard Wheel (CHW) was used to classify the coasts of GBA, assess its hazard change from 2010 to 2020, identify hazards hotspots and explore available coastal management options. The results show that the coastal types of GBA in 2010 and 2020 are consistent, with delta/low estuary island and hard rock slope as the main types. GBA is vulnerable to ecosystem disruption, saltwater intrusion, gradual inundation and flooding hazards. Compared with 2010, the high risk proportion of each hazard in 2020 decreased significantly, but the high risk of flooding increased slightly. All kinds of hazards are interdependent and influenced by each other. The Pearl River Estuary, the east bank of Yamen Waterway, the west bank of Huangmao Sea and Dapeng Bay show very high hazard vulnerability, and the flooding risk is the highest. Soft measures such as coastal zoning, tsunami warning systems, wetland restoration and hazard simulation are most widely used in coastal management. CHW is applicable to GBA’s coastal hazard vulnerability assessment, which provides a case study for coastal risk assessment of GBA and has certain reference significance for hazard management and sustainable development for the Bay Area.

A Flood Damage and Shelter Need Assessment: A Case Study of Mueang Sing Buri, Thailand

Flooding is one of the main disasters in Thailand and Mueang Sing Buri is among those areas hit. Located on the Chao Phraya River Basin, in the central region of Thailand, the area receives a large amount of runoff during monsoon seasons which causes frequent flood disasters. The aims of this research are to create a flood hazard map and to estimate the number of people that may need shelter after the occurrence of a flood, and to evaluate whether the shelter capacity is adequate in Mueang Sing Buri. To explore the potential locations of emergency shelters, the relevant information related to flooding was initially recorded, such as building detail, flood depth, elevation map, and flood risk map. The available space of each building varies by the characteristics of building types. The calculation of shelter capacity thus depends on characteristics of the buildings, accessibility, and percent of vacant area. The emergency shelter assessment benefits many sectors in the design of preparation plans for hazard management.

Application of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model and Expert Choice Software for Coastal City Vulnerability Evaluation

Climate change is regarded as a serious threat to both environment and humanity, and as a result, it has piqued worldwide attention in the twenty-first century. Natural hazards are expected to have major effects in the coastal cities of the globe. At the same time, about two-thirds of the world’s human population lives in the coastal margins. One of the fundamental issues for coastal city planners is the coastal cities’ environmental change. This paper presents the application of a model framework for the management and sustainable development of coastal cities under a changing climate in Kuala Terengganu Malaysia. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is performed in the Expert Choice software for coastal city hazard management. This approach enables decision-makers to evaluate and identify the relative priorities of vulnerability and hazard criteria and sub-criteria based on a set of preferences, criteria, and alternatives. This paper also presents a hierarchy erosion design applied in Kuala Terengganu to choose the important sustainable weights of criteria and sub-criteria as well as the zone as an alternative model.

Monitoring volcanoes in Mexico

Mexico has at least 46 volcanic centers (including monogenetic volcanic fields) that are considered active or potentially active. Due to the federal governance of the country, the Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (CENAPRED) is the entity responsible for monitoring natural hazards. Individual Mexican states also monitor active volcanoes within their territoryand through local universities. Specific observatories exist for Colima, Citlaltépetl (Pico de Orizaba), San Martín Tuxtla, El Chichón, and Tacaná volcanoes, which are considered among the volcanoes with the highest hazard potential in the country. Details on instrumentation, data acquisition, hazard management, information dissemination and outreach are given for each volcano and observatory. The creation of a National Volcanological Service, based at CENAPRED and in full cooperation with local university-based observatories, would help consolidate all monitoring data and official information on active volcanoes at a single institution, procure and distribute resources, and allocate those resources according to the relative risk posed by the different volcanoes. México tiene al menos 46 centros volcánicos que podrían considerarse activos o potencialmente activos (incluyendo campos volcánicos monogenéticos). Debido al carácter federal del país, el Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (CENAPRED) es la entidad responsable de monitorear los fenómenos naturales. Individualmente, algunos estados mexicanos también monitorean los volcanes activos dentro de su territorio, a través de las universidades locales, por lo que existen observatorios específicos para Colima, Citlaltépetl (Pico de Orizaba), San Martín Tuxtla, El Chichón y Tacaná; todos estos considerados entre los volcanes de mayor riesgo relativo del país. Se proporcionan detalles sobre instrumentación, adquisición de datos, gestión de riesgos y difusión y divulgación de información para cada volcán y observatorio. La creación de un Servicio Vulcanológico Nacional, con sede en CENAPRED, y en cooperación plena con los observatorios universitarios locales, ayudaría a concentrar todos los datos de monitoreo e información oficial sobre los volcanes activos en una sola institución, así como a adquirir y asignar recursos, de acuerdo con el riesgo relativo que representan los diferentes volcanes.