Living With Floods: A Comparative Assessment of Resilience to Floods in Tal and Diara Regions of Malda District, West Bengal

Tal and Diara regions of Malda district are extremely prone to floods, still, report higher population density than the state's average density. This indicates that the local population has learned to live with floods by developing resilience to the flood threat through better preparedness, coping, and adaptive strategies. Such micro-level strategies developed by the local people can be useful to policymakers and social scientists alike in terms of better mitigating the flood menace and associated vulnerability. This paper attempts to measure and compare the level of flood resilience of the local people living in Tal and Diara at the household level. Furthermore, the article aims to analyse whether the distance from the major flood-causing rivers, viz. Fulhar in Tal and Ganga in Diara play a role in the degree of resilience of the population to floods. The paper is empirical, where information has been collected from sample households and focus group discussion with village elders in two sets of villages, i.e., Maniknagar and Ratua in Tal and Gopalpur and Nurpur in Diara. The UNDP technique has been used to compute the composite Resilience Index (RI) consisting of Preparedness Index (PI), Immediate Coping Index (ICI), and Adaptive Index (AI). The findings suggest that the villages located in and around the levees of major flood-causing rivers, viz. Maniknagar in Tal and Gopalpur in Diara records a higher level of resilience to floods in comparison to the interior villages, viz. Ratua in Tal and Nurpur in Diara. The paper concludes that in both Tal and Diara, people have learned to cope and adapt to floods and that the closer the distance from the major flood-causing rivers, the higher the villagers' resilience to flood hazards.

Research on the Denoising of the Beidou Carrier Signal based on EEMD Algorithm with Adaptive Reconstruction Optimizing of IMF Numbers

The Beidou carrier signal is coupled into a certain noise during propagation and reception, and these noise will directly affect the processing procedure associated with it. To deal with the problem of the influence due to the manually setting the IMF (Intrinsic Mode Function) component number for the reconstruction signal, a new measuring index that used for finding the optimal IMF components to reconstruct the signal has been designed in this paper. The index has taken the shape of the signal, signal noise ratio and correlation index into consideration. Upon on the basis, an adaptive index optimization Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (AIO-EEMD) algorithm has been proposed in this paper. To verify the validity of the algorithm, four different algorithms are used to denoised the collected Beidou signal. The experiment results show that the noise reduction using the AIO-EEMD method can not only automatically obtain the optimal IMF components number, but also has a significant advantage over the other three methods.

Productivity of early table grape varieties in conditions of the seaside zone of Dagestan

Relevance and methods. The purpose of the research is an agrobiological assessment of introduced grape varieties of early ripening in the conditions of the Central seaside zone of Dagestan. The tasks of the study are to establish the timing of maturation of the studied varieties in the conditions of the Central seaside zone of Dagestan; to study agrobiological indicators of the studied varieties and to give an economic assessment; On the basis of the data obtained, to establish the degree of adaptability and prospects of the studied classes under these conditions. The objects of research were new introduced table grape varieties of early and early maturation period Augustine, Arcadia, Talisman, Attica, Kishmish luchisty. Results. The studies found that the introduced varieties of Arcadia, Attica, Talisman, Kishmish luchisty in the main agrobiological indicators surpass the Augustine variety widespread in this zone. According to the weight of the bunch, the varieties are distributed as follows: Kishmish luchisty – 724.5 g, Talisman – 676 g, Attica – 655.8 g, Arkadia – 514 g and Augustine (control) – 486 g. All varieties included in the experiment were more productive than control. The highest crop was provided by the variety Talisman – 28 t/ha. In second place is the Attica – 24.4 t/ha variety. Kishmish luchisty, despite the large mass of the bunch, provided a harvest of 22.6 t/ha. Arkadya variety in yield has close values to control – 18.2 t/ha. According to the adaptive index, the varieties were distributed as follows: Arcadia, Attica, Augustine and Talisman, with an adaptive coefficient of 0.71-0.85, are promising, and Kishmish luchisty with an adaptive coefficient of 0.69 is quite promising.

Determination of Adaptive Capacity for Flash Floods in Sri Lankan Context: Colombo City

Sri Lanka has witnessed many natural and anthropogenic disasters that have had a devastating impact on community and the economic welfare of the country. Disaster management actions are required to be taken to reduce disaster risk. Adaptive capacity is one of such measurements that can predict the resilience of the community. Climate changes directly effects on occurrences of disasters, especially on flash floods, which is one of the frequent disasters in Sri Lanka. The present research explained about developing an adaptive index for flash flood occurrences in the Colombo City, Sri Lanka. Secondary data were used to identify indicators of the index as well as to quantify the frequency and severity of the flash flood. Five determinants and 16 indicators were developed for the index by considering all 47 wards of Colombo city. All measurements were weighted by using a questionnaire survey and the results were normalized. Five determinants were mapped based on analyzed data and the highest vulnerability wards were identified. Mahawatte ward has the highest vulnerability followed by Wanathamulla and Bluemendhal. On the other hand, Kotehena East was observed as the lowest vulnerability ward followed by Wellawatte South and Wellawatte North.