Flood Losses Associated with Winter Storms in the U.S. Northeast

Science.gov (United States)

Ting, M.; Shimkus, C.

2015-12-01

Winter storms pose a number of hazards to coastal communities in the U.S. Northeast including heavy rain, snow, strong wind, cold temperatures, and flooding. These hazards can cause millions in property damages from one storm alone. This study addresses the impacts of winter storms from 2001 - 2012 on coastal counties in the U.S. Northeast and underscores the significant economic consequences extreme winter storms have on property. The analysis on the types of hazards (floods, strong wind, snow, etc.) and associated damage from the National Climatic Data Center Storm Events Database indicates that floods were responsible for the highest damages. This finding suggests that winter storm vulnerability could grow in the future as precipitation intensity increases and sea level rise exacerbate flood losses. Flood loss maps are constructed based on damage amount, which can be compared to the flood exposure maps constructed by the NOAA Office of Coastal Management. Interesting agreements and discrepancies exist between the two methods, which warrant further examination. Furthermore, flood losses often came from storms characterized as heavy precipitation storms and strong surge storms, and sometimes both, illustrating the compounding effect of flood risks in the region. While New Jersey counties experienced the most damage per unit area, there is no discernable connection between population density and damage amount, which suggests that societal impacts may rely less on population characteristics and more on infrastructure types and property values, which vary throughout the region.

Determining tropical cyclone inland flooding loss on a large scale through a new flood peak ratio-based methodology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Czajkowski, Jeffrey; Michel-Kerjan, Erwann; Villarini, Gabriele; Smith, James A

2013-01-01

In recent years, the United States has been severely affected by numerous tropical cyclones (TCs) which have caused massive damages. While media attention mainly focuses on coastal losses from storm surge, these TCs have inflicted significant devastation inland as well. Yet, little is known about the relationship between TC-related inland flooding and economic losses. Here we introduce a novel methodology that first successfully characterizes the spatial extent of inland flooding, and then quantifies its relationship with flood insurance claims. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 is used as illustration. We empirically demonstrate in a number of ways that our quantified inland flood magnitude produces a very good representation of the number of inland flood insurance claims experienced. These results highlight the new technological capabilities that can lead to a better risk assessment of inland TC flood. This new capacity will be of tremendous value to a number of public and private sector stakeholders dealing with disaster preparedness. (letter)

Agricultural damages and losses from ARkStorm scenario flooding in California

Science.gov (United States)

Wein, Anne; David Mitchell,; Peters, Jeff; John Rowden,; Johnny Tran,; Alessandra Corsi,; Dinitz, Laura B.

2016-01-01

Scientists designed the ARkStorm scenario to challenge the preparedness of California communities for widespread flooding with a historical precedence and increased likelihood under climate change. California is an important provider of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other agricultural products to the nation. This study analyzes the agricultural damages and losses pertaining to annual crops, perennial crops, and livestock in California exposed to ARkStorm flooding. Statewide, flood damage is incurred on approximately 23% of annual crop acreage, 5% of perennial crop acreage, and 5% of livestock, e.g., dairy, feedlot, and poultry, acreage. The sum of field repair costs, forgone income, and product replacement costs span $3.7 and $7.1 billion (2009) for a range of inundation durations. Perennial crop loss estimates dominate, and the vulnerability of orchards and vineyards has likely increased with recent expansion. Crop reestablishment delays from levee repair and dewatering more than double annual crop losses in the delta islands, assuming the fragile system does not remain permanently flooded. The exposure of almost 200,000 dairy cows to ARkStorm flooding poses livestock evacuation challenges. Read More: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29NH.1527-6996.0000174

A High Precision Comprehensive Evaluation Method for Flood Disaster Loss Based on Improved Genetic Programming

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

ZHOU Yuliang; LU Guihua; JIN Juliang; TONG Fang; ZHOU Ping

2006-01-01

Precise comprehensive evaluation of flood disaster loss is significant for the prevention and mitigation of flood disasters. Here, one of the difficulties involved is how to establish a model capable of describing the complex relation between the input and output data of the system of flood disaster loss. Genetic programming (GP) solves problems by using ideas from genetic algorithm and generates computer programs automatically. In this study a new method named the evaluation of the grade of flood disaster loss (EGFD) on the basis of improved genetic programming (IGP) is presented (IGPEGFD). The flood disaster area and the direct economic loss are taken as the evaluation indexes of flood disaster loss. Obviously that the larger the evaluation index value, the larger the corresponding value of the grade of flood disaster loss is. Consequently the IGP code is designed to make the value of the grade of flood disaster be an increasing function of the index value. The result of the application of the IGP-EGFD model to Henan Province shows that a good function expression can be obtained within a bigger searched function space; and the model is of high precision and considerable practical significance.Thus, IGP-EGFD can be widely used in automatic modeling and other evaluation systems.

Flooding and subsidence in the Thames Gateway: impact on insurance loss potential

Science.gov (United States)

Royse, Katherine; Horn, Diane; Eldridge, Jillian; Barker, Karen

2010-05-01

In the UK, household buildings insurance generally covers loss and damage to the insured property from a range of natural and human perils, including windstorm, flood, subsidence, theft, accidental fire and winter freeze. Consequently, insurers require a reasoned view on the likely scale of losses that they may face to assist in strategic planning, reinsurance structuring, regulatory returns and general risk management. The UK summer 2007 flood events not only provided a clear indication of the scale of potential losses that the industry could face from an individual event, with £3 billion in claims, but also identified a need for insurers and reinsurers to better understand how events may correlate in time and space, and how to most effectively use the computational models of extreme events that are commonly applied to reflect these correlations. In addition to the potential for temporal clustering of events such as windstorms and floods, there is a possibility that seemingly uncorrelated natural perils, such as floods and subsidence, may impact an insurer's portfolio. Where aggregations of large numbers of new properties are planned, such as in the Thames Gateway, consideration of the potential future risk of aggregate losses due to the combination of perils such as subsidence and flood is increasingly important within the insurance company's strategic risk management process. Whilst perils such as subsidence and flooding are generally considered independent within risk modelling, the potential for one event to influence the magnitude and likelihood of the other should be taken into account when determining risk level. In addition, the impact of correlated, but distinctive, loss causing events on particular property types may be significant, particularly if a specific property is designed to protect against one peril but is potentially susceptible to another. We suggest that flood events can lead to increased subsidence risk due to the weight of additional water

A Review of Flood Loss Models as Basis for Harmonization and Benchmarking.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tina Gerl

Full Text Available Risk-based approaches have been increasingly accepted and operationalized in flood risk management during recent decades. For instance, commercial flood risk models are used by the insurance industry to assess potential losses, establish the pricing of policies and determine reinsurance needs. Despite considerable progress in the development of loss estimation tools since the 1980s, loss estimates still reflect high uncertainties and disparities that often lead to questioning their quality. This requires an assessment of the validity and robustness of loss models as it affects prioritization and investment decision in flood risk management as well as regulatory requirements and business decisions in the insurance industry. Hence, more effort is needed to quantify uncertainties and undertake validations. Due to a lack of detailed and reliable flood loss data, first order validations are difficult to accomplish, so that model comparisons in terms of benchmarking are essential. It is checked if the models are informed by existing data and knowledge and if the assumptions made in the models are aligned with the existing knowledge. When this alignment is confirmed through validation or benchmarking exercises, the user gains confidence in the models. Before these benchmarking exercises are feasible, however, a cohesive survey of existing knowledge needs to be undertaken. With that aim, this work presents a review of flood loss-or flood vulnerability-relationships collected from the public domain and some professional sources. Our survey analyses 61 sources consisting of publications or software packages, of which 47 are reviewed in detail. This exercise results in probably the most complete review of flood loss models to date containing nearly a thousand vulnerability functions. These functions are highly heterogeneous and only about half of the loss models are found to be accompanied by explicit validation at the time of their proposal. This paper

A Review of Flood Loss Models as Basis for Harmonization and Benchmarking.

Science.gov (United States)

Gerl, Tina; Kreibich, Heidi; Franco, Guillermo; Marechal, David; Schröter, Kai

2016-01-01

Risk-based approaches have been increasingly accepted and operationalized in flood risk management during recent decades. For instance, commercial flood risk models are used by the insurance industry to assess potential losses, establish the pricing of policies and determine reinsurance needs. Despite considerable progress in the development of loss estimation tools since the 1980s, loss estimates still reflect high uncertainties and disparities that often lead to questioning their quality. This requires an assessment of the validity and robustness of loss models as it affects prioritization and investment decision in flood risk management as well as regulatory requirements and business decisions in the insurance industry. Hence, more effort is needed to quantify uncertainties and undertake validations. Due to a lack of detailed and reliable flood loss data, first order validations are difficult to accomplish, so that model comparisons in terms of benchmarking are essential. It is checked if the models are informed by existing data and knowledge and if the assumptions made in the models are aligned with the existing knowledge. When this alignment is confirmed through validation or benchmarking exercises, the user gains confidence in the models. Before these benchmarking exercises are feasible, however, a cohesive survey of existing knowledge needs to be undertaken. With that aim, this work presents a review of flood loss-or flood vulnerability-relationships collected from the public domain and some professional sources. Our survey analyses 61 sources consisting of publications or software packages, of which 47 are reviewed in detail. This exercise results in probably the most complete review of flood loss models to date containing nearly a thousand vulnerability functions. These functions are highly heterogeneous and only about half of the loss models are found to be accompanied by explicit validation at the time of their proposal. This paper exemplarily presents

Multi-model ensembles for assessment of flood losses and associated uncertainty

Science.gov (United States)

Figueiredo, Rui; Schröter, Kai; Weiss-Motz, Alexander; Martina, Mario L. V.; Kreibich, Heidi

2018-05-01

Flood loss modelling is a crucial part of risk assessments. However, it is subject to large uncertainty that is often neglected. Most models available in the literature are deterministic, providing only single point estimates of flood loss, and large disparities tend to exist among them. Adopting any one such model in a risk assessment context is likely to lead to inaccurate loss estimates and sub-optimal decision-making. In this paper, we propose the use of multi-model ensembles to address these issues. This approach, which has been applied successfully in other scientific fields, is based on the combination of different model outputs with the aim of improving the skill and usefulness of predictions. We first propose a model rating framework to support ensemble construction, based on a probability tree of model properties, which establishes relative degrees of belief between candidate models. Using 20 flood loss models in two test cases, we then construct numerous multi-model ensembles, based both on the rating framework and on a stochastic method, differing in terms of participating members, ensemble size and model weights. We evaluate the performance of ensemble means, as well as their probabilistic skill and reliability. Our results demonstrate that well-designed multi-model ensembles represent a pragmatic approach to consistently obtain more accurate flood loss estimates and reliable probability distributions of model uncertainty.

Aligning Natural Resource Conservation and Flood Hazard Mitigation in California.

Science.gov (United States)

Calil, Juliano; Beck, Michael W; Gleason, Mary; Merrifield, Matthew; Klausmeyer, Kirk; Newkirk, Sarah

2015-01-01

Flooding is the most common and damaging of all natural disasters in the United States, and was a factor in almost all declared disasters in U.S. Direct flood losses in the U.S. in 2011 totaled $8.41 billion and flood damage has also been on the rise globally over the past century. The National Flood Insurance Program paid out more than $38 billion in claims since its inception in 1968, more than a third of which has gone to the one percent of policies that experienced multiple losses and are classified as "repetitive loss." During the same period, the loss of coastal wetlands and other natural habitat has continued, and funds for conservation and restoration of these habitats are very limited. This study demonstrates that flood losses could be mitigated through action that meets both flood risk reduction and conservation objectives. We found that there are at least 11,243km2 of land in coastal California, which is both flood-prone and has natural resource conservation value, and where a property/structure buyout and habitat restoration project could meet multiple objectives. For example, our results show that in Sonoma County, the extent of land that meets these criteria is 564km2. Further, we explore flood mitigation grant programs that can be a significant source of funds to such projects. We demonstrate that government funded buyouts followed by restoration of targeted lands can support social, environmental, and economic objectives: reduction of flood exposure, restoration of natural resources, and efficient use of limited governmental funds.

Aligning Natural Resource Conservation and Flood Hazard Mitigation in California.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliano Calil

Full Text Available Flooding is the most common and damaging of all natural disasters in the United States, and was a factor in almost all declared disasters in U.S.Direct flood losses in the U.S. in 2011 totaled $8.41 billion and flood damage has also been on the rise globally over the past century. The National Flood Insurance Program paid out more than $38 billion in claims since its inception in 1968, more than a third of which has gone to the one percent of policies that experienced multiple losses and are classified as "repetitive loss." During the same period, the loss of coastal wetlands and other natural habitat has continued, and funds for conservation and restoration of these habitats are very limited. This study demonstrates that flood losses could be mitigated through action that meets both flood risk reduction and conservation objectives. We found that there are at least 11,243km2 of land in coastal California, which is both flood-prone and has natural resource conservation value, and where a property/structure buyout and habitat restoration project could meet multiple objectives. For example, our results show that in Sonoma County, the extent of land that meets these criteria is 564km2. Further, we explore flood mitigation grant programs that can be a significant source of funds to such projects. We demonstrate that government funded buyouts followed by restoration of targeted lands can support social, environmental, and economic objectives: reduction of flood exposure, restoration of natural resources, and efficient use of limited governmental funds.

A Review of Flood Loss Models as Basis for Harmonization and Benchmarking

Science.gov (United States)

Kreibich, Heidi; Franco, Guillermo; Marechal, David

2016-01-01

Risk-based approaches have been increasingly accepted and operationalized in flood risk management during recent decades. For instance, commercial flood risk models are used by the insurance industry to assess potential losses, establish the pricing of policies and determine reinsurance needs. Despite considerable progress in the development of loss estimation tools since the 1980s, loss estimates still reflect high uncertainties and disparities that often lead to questioning their quality. This requires an assessment of the validity and robustness of loss models as it affects prioritization and investment decision in flood risk management as well as regulatory requirements and business decisions in the insurance industry. Hence, more effort is needed to quantify uncertainties and undertake validations. Due to a lack of detailed and reliable flood loss data, first order validations are difficult to accomplish, so that model comparisons in terms of benchmarking are essential. It is checked if the models are informed by existing data and knowledge and if the assumptions made in the models are aligned with the existing knowledge. When this alignment is confirmed through validation or benchmarking exercises, the user gains confidence in the models. Before these benchmarking exercises are feasible, however, a cohesive survey of existing knowledge needs to be undertaken. With that aim, this work presents a review of flood loss–or flood vulnerability–relationships collected from the public domain and some professional sources. Our survey analyses 61 sources consisting of publications or software packages, of which 47 are reviewed in detail. This exercise results in probably the most complete review of flood loss models to date containing nearly a thousand vulnerability functions. These functions are highly heterogeneous and only about half of the loss models are found to be accompanied by explicit validation at the time of their proposal. This paper exemplarily

Flooding in ephemeral streams: incorporating transmission losses

Science.gov (United States)

Stream flow in semiarid lands commonly occurs as a form of flash floods in dry ephemeral stream beds. The goal of this research is to couple hydrological and hydraulic models treats channel transmission losses and test the methodology in the USDA-ARS Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW). For h...

Flood Damage and Loss Estimation for Iowa on Web-based Systems using HAZUS

Science.gov (United States)

Yildirim, E.; Sermet, M. Y.; Demir, I.

2016-12-01

Importance of decision support systems for flood emergency response and loss estimation increases with its social and economic impacts. To estimate the damage of the flood, there are several software systems available to researchers and decision makers. HAZUS-MH is one of the most widely used desktop program, developed by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), to estimate economic loss and social impacts of disasters such as earthquake, hurricane and flooding (riverine and coastal). HAZUS used loss estimation methodology and implements through geographic information system (GIS). HAZUS contains structural, demographic, and vehicle information across United States. Thus, it allows decision makers to understand and predict possible casualties and damage of the floods by running flood simulations through GIS application. However, it doesn't represent real time conditions because of using static data. To close this gap, an overview of a web-based infrastructure coupling HAZUS and real time data provided by IFIS (Iowa Flood Information System) is presented by this research. IFIS is developed by the Iowa Flood Center, and a one-stop web-platform to access community-based flood conditions, forecasts, visualizations, inundation maps and flood-related data, information, and applications. Large volume of real-time observational data from a variety of sensors and remote sensing resources (radars, rain gauges, stream sensors, etc.) and flood inundation models are staged on a user-friendly maps environment that is accessible to the general public. Providing cross sectional analyses between HAZUS-MH and IFIS datasets, emergency managers are able to evaluate flood damage during flood events easier and more accessible in real time conditions. With matching data from HAZUS-MH census tract layer and IFC gauges, economical effects of flooding can be observed and evaluated by decision makers. The system will also provide visualization of the data by using augmented reality for

Flood loss reduction of private households due to building precautionary measures -- lessons learned from the Elbe flood in August 2002

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H. Kreibich

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Building houses in inundation areas is always a risk, since absolute flood protection is impossible. Where settlements already exist, flood damage must be kept as small as possible. Suitable means are precautionary measures such as elevated building configuration or flood adapted use. However, data about the effects of such measures are rare, and consequently, the efficiency of different precautionary measures is unclear. To improve the knowledge about efficient precautionary measures, approximately 1200 private households, which were affected by the 2002 flood at the river Elbe and its tributaries, were interviewed about the flood damage of their buildings and contents as well as about their precautionary measures. The affected households had little flood experience, i.e. only 15% had experienced a flood before. 59% of the households stated that they did not know, that they live in a flood prone area. Thus, people were not well prepared, e.g. just 11% had used and furnished their house in a flood adapted way and only 6% had a flood adapted building structure. Building precautionary measures are mainly effective in areas with frequent small floods. But also during the extreme flood event in 2002 building measures reduced the flood loss. From the six different building precautionary measures under study, flood adapted use and adapted interior fitting were the most effective ones. They reduced the damage ratio for buildings by 46% and 53%, respectively. The damage ratio for contents was reduced by 48% due to flood adapted use and by 53% due to flood adapted interior fitting. The 2002 flood motivated a relatively large number of people to implement private precautionary measures, but still much more could be done. Hence, to further reduce flood losses, people's motivation to invest in precaution should be improved. More information campaigns and financial incentives should be issued to encourage precautionary measures.

Disaster Loss and Social Media: Can Online Information Increase Flood Resilience?

Science.gov (United States)

Allaire, M.

2016-12-01

When confronted with natural disasters, individuals around the world increasingly use online resources to become informed of forecasted conditions and advisable actions. This study tests the effectiveness of online information and social media in enabling households to reduce disaster losses. The 2011 Bangkok flood is utilized as a case study since it was one of the first major disasters to affect a substantial population connected to social media. The role of online information is investigated with a mixed methods approach. Both quantitative (propensity score matching) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) techniques are employed. The study relies on two data sources - survey responses from 469 Bangkok households and in-depth interviews with twenty-three internet users who are a subset of the survey participants. Propensity score matching indicates that social media enabled households to reduce flood losses by an average of 37% (USD 3,708), using a nearest neighbor estimator. This reduction is massive when considering that total flood losses for the full sample averaged USD 4,903. Social media offered information not available from other sources, such as localized and nearly real-time updates of flood location and depth. With this knowledge, households could move belongings to higher ground before floodwaters arrived. These findings suggest that utilizing social media users as sensors could better inform populations during disasters. Overall, the study reveals that online information can enable effective disaster preparedness and reduce losses.

From global circulation to flood loss: Coupling models across the scales

Science.gov (United States)

Felder, Guido; Gomez-Navarro, Juan Jose; Bozhinova, Denica; Zischg, Andreas; Raible, Christoph C.; Ole, Roessler; Martius, Olivia; Weingartner, Rolf

2017-04-01

The prediction and the prevention of flood losses requires an extensive understanding of underlying meteorological, hydrological, hydraulic and damage processes. Coupled models help to improve the understanding of such underlying processes and therefore contribute the understanding of flood risk. Using such a modelling approach to determine potentially flood-affected areas and damages requires a complex coupling between several models operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Although the isolated parts of the single modelling components are well established and commonly used in the literature, a full coupling including a mesoscale meteorological model driven by a global circulation one, a hydrologic model, a hydrodynamic model and a flood impact and loss model has not been reported so far. In the present study, we tackle the application of such a coupled model chain in terms of computational resources, scale effects, and model performance. From a technical point of view, results show the general applicability of such a coupled model, as well as good model performance. From a practical point of view, such an approach enables the prediction of flood-induced damages, although some future challenges have been identified.

How to deal properly with a natural catastrophe database - analysis of flood losses

Science.gov (United States)

Kron, W.; Steuer, M.; Löw, P.; Wirtz, A.

2012-03-01

Global reinsurer Munich Re has been collecting data on losses from natural disasters for almost four decades. Together with EM-Dat and sigma, Munich Re's NatCatSERVICE database is currently one of three global databases of its kind, with its more than 30 000 datasets. Although the database was originally designed for reinsurance business purposes, it contains a host of additional information on catastrophic events. Data collection poses difficulties such as not knowing the exact extent of human and material losses, biased reporting by interest groups, including governments, changes over time due to new findings, etc. Loss quantities are often not separable into different causes, e.g., windstorm and flood losses during a hurricane, or windstorm, hail and flooding during a severe storm event. These difficulties should be kept in mind when database figures are analysed statistically, and the results have to be treated with due regard for the characteristics of the underlying data. Comparing events at different locations and on different dates can only be done using normalised data. For most analyses, and in particular trend analyses, socio-economic changes such as inflation or growth in population and values must be considered. Problems encountered when analysing trends are discussed using the example of floods and flood losses.

THE ASSESSMENT OF ECONOMICAL LOSS CAUSED BY FLOODS AND FLASH-FLOODS BY USING COMPUTER TECHNIQUES. CASE STUDY: LOPĂTARI VILLAGE, SLĂNIC RIVER

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COSTACHE R.

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The present study aims to provide an example of the assessment of economical loss caused by floods and flash-floods, by integrating GIS techniques of hydraulic and hydrological modelling. The case study was performed in Lopătari village, which is located in the upper area of Slănic River, one of the most affected areas by floods and flash-floods. The flood event produced on 29.V.2012 was considered in order to perform this study. Thus, a flood hydrograph was simulated by using software HEC-HMS 3.5, based on hourly precipitation data from Bisoca meteorological station from 29.V.2012. The peak discharge resulting from the hydrological modelling software was used in HEC-RAS 4.1 hydraulic modelling software in order to determine the extent of flooding band, the number of the affected elements and the local economical loss. Finally, 21 flooded buildings were identified and 550 m of affected road, the estimated economical damage being about 800,000 RON.

Audiovisual sentence repetition as a clinical criterion for auditory development in Persian-language children with hearing loss.

Science.gov (United States)

Oryadi-Zanjani, Mohammad Majid; Vahab, Maryam; Rahimi, Zahra; Mayahi, Anis

2017-02-01

It is important for clinician such as speech-language pathologists and audiologists to develop more efficient procedures to assess the development of auditory, speech and language skills in children using hearing aid and/or cochlear implant compared to their peers with normal hearing. So, the aim of study was the comparison of the performance of 5-to-7-year-old Persian-language children with and without hearing loss in visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual presentation of sentence repetition task. The research was administered as a cross-sectional study. The sample size was 92 Persian 5-7 year old children including: 60 with normal hearing and 32 with hearing loss. The children with hearing loss were recruited from Soroush rehabilitation center for Persian-language children with hearing loss in Shiraz, Iran, through consecutive sampling method. All the children had unilateral cochlear implant or bilateral hearing aid. The assessment tool was the Sentence Repetition Test. The study included three computer-based experiments including visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual. The scores were compared within and among the three groups through statistical tests in α = 0.05. The score of sentence repetition task between V-only, A-only, and AV presentation was significantly different in the three groups; in other words, the highest to lowest scores belonged respectively to audiovisual, auditory-only, and visual-only format in the children with normal hearing (P audiovisual sentence repetition scores in all the 5-to-7-year-old children (r = 0.179, n = 92, P = 0.088), but audiovisual sentence repetition scores were found to be strongly correlated with auditory-only scores in all the 5-to-7-year-old children (r = 0.943, n = 92, P = 0.000). According to the study's findings, audiovisual integration occurs in the 5-to-7-year-old Persian children using hearing aid or cochlear implant during sentence repetition similar to their peers with normal hearing

Hydro-Economic based Model of Damage and Loss Analysis of Winongo River Flood

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Muhammad Rifki Hardika

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Winongo River experienced considerably high flow that caused overflows along the downstream part of the river and some inundation at the surrounding area. The inundation has reached up to 1 m spread over the Tegalrejo Sub-district of Yogyakarta City and swept two houses. This paper analyses the damage and loss due to the flood by taking into account the hydraulics phenomena and the economic impact at the inundation area. A hydraulics model has been developed to study the flow characteristics during the flood of Winongo River, especially in the river reach in Tegalrejo Sub-district. The hazard-induced damages in the flooded area were identified and the economic impacts were studied. Several related software have been utilized to analyse the damage and loss of the disaster, including the HEC-RAS 5.0, ArcGIS, HEC-GeoRAS and InaSAFE. Through the integration of the characteristics of both flood phenomena and the economic factor, the damage and loss were then analysed and the Average Annual Damage (AAD of approximately IDR 88,750,000,000 was obtained.

How to deal properly with a natural catastrophe database – analysis of flood losses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

W. Kron

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Global reinsurer Munich Re has been collecting data on losses from natural disasters for almost four decades. Together with EM-Dat and sigma, Munich Re's NatCatSERVICE database is currently one of three global databases of its kind, with its more than 30 000 datasets. Although the database was originally designed for reinsurance business purposes, it contains a host of additional information on catastrophic events. Data collection poses difficulties such as not knowing the exact extent of human and material losses, biased reporting by interest groups, including governments, changes over time due to new findings, etc. Loss quantities are often not separable into different causes, e.g., windstorm and flood losses during a hurricane, or windstorm, hail and flooding during a severe storm event. These difficulties should be kept in mind when database figures are analysed statistically, and the results have to be treated with due regard for the characteristics of the underlying data. Comparing events at different locations and on different dates can only be done using normalised data. For most analyses, and in particular trend analyses, socio-economic changes such as inflation or growth in population and values must be considered. Problems encountered when analysing trends are discussed using the example of floods and flood losses.

Amazon river flow regime and flood recessional agriculture: Flood stage reversals and risk of annual crop loss

Science.gov (United States)

Coomes, Oliver T.; Lapointe, Michel; Templeton, Michael; List, Geneva

2016-08-01

The annual flood cycle is an important driver of ecosystem structure and function in large tropical rivers such as the Amazon. Riparian peasant communities rely on river fishing and annual floodplain agriculture, closely adapted to the recession phase of the flood pulse. This article reports on a poorly documented but important challenge facing farmers practicing flood recessional agriculture along the Amazon river: frequent, unpredictable stage reversals (repiquetes) which threaten to ruin crops growing on channel bars. We assess the severity of stage reversals for rice production on exposed river mud bars (barreales) near Iquitos, Peru. Crop loss risk is estimated based on a quantitative analysis of 45 years of daily Amazon stage data and field data from floodplain communities nearby in the Muyuy archipelago, upstream of Iquitos. Rice varieties selected, elevations of silt rich bars where rice is sown, as well as planting and harvest dates are analyzed in the light of the timing, frequencies and amplitudes of observed stage reversals that have the potential to destroy growing rice. We find that unpredictable stage reversals can produce substantial crop losses and shorten significantly the length of average growing seasons on lower elevation river bars. The data reveal that local famers extend planting down to lower bar elevations where the mean probabilities of re-submergence before rice maturity (due to reversals) approach 50%, below which they implicitly consider that the risk of crop loss outweighs the potential reward of planting.

Up-scaling of multi-variable flood loss models from objects to land use units at the meso-scale

Science.gov (United States)

Kreibich, Heidi; Schröter, Kai; Merz, Bruno

2016-05-01

Flood risk management increasingly relies on risk analyses, including loss modelling. Most of the flood loss models usually applied in standard practice have in common that complex damaging processes are described by simple approaches like stage-damage functions. Novel multi-variable models significantly improve loss estimation on the micro-scale and may also be advantageous for large-scale applications. However, more input parameters also reveal additional uncertainty, even more in upscaling procedures for meso-scale applications, where the parameters need to be estimated on a regional area-wide basis. To gain more knowledge about challenges associated with the up-scaling of multi-variable flood loss models the following approach is applied: Single- and multi-variable micro-scale flood loss models are up-scaled and applied on the meso-scale, namely on basis of ATKIS land-use units. Application and validation is undertaken in 19 municipalities, which were affected during the 2002 flood by the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany by comparison to official loss data provided by the Saxon Relief Bank (SAB).In the meso-scale case study based model validation, most multi-variable models show smaller errors than the uni-variable stage-damage functions. The results show the suitability of the up-scaling approach, and, in accordance with micro-scale validation studies, that multi-variable models are an improvement in flood loss modelling also on the meso-scale. However, uncertainties remain high, stressing the importance of uncertainty quantification. Thus, the development of probabilistic loss models, like BT-FLEMO used in this study, which inherently provide uncertainty information are the way forward.

Up-scaling of multi-variable flood loss models from objects to land use units at the meso-scale

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

H. Kreibich

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Flood risk management increasingly relies on risk analyses, including loss modelling. Most of the flood loss models usually applied in standard practice have in common that complex damaging processes are described by simple approaches like stage-damage functions. Novel multi-variable models significantly improve loss estimation on the micro-scale and may also be advantageous for large-scale applications. However, more input parameters also reveal additional uncertainty, even more in upscaling procedures for meso-scale applications, where the parameters need to be estimated on a regional area-wide basis. To gain more knowledge about challenges associated with the up-scaling of multi-variable flood loss models the following approach is applied: Single- and multi-variable micro-scale flood loss models are up-scaled and applied on the meso-scale, namely on basis of ATKIS land-use units. Application and validation is undertaken in 19 municipalities, which were affected during the 2002 flood by the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany by comparison to official loss data provided by the Saxon Relief Bank (SAB.In the meso-scale case study based model validation, most multi-variable models show smaller errors than the uni-variable stage-damage functions. The results show the suitability of the up-scaling approach, and, in accordance with micro-scale validation studies, that multi-variable models are an improvement in flood loss modelling also on the meso-scale. However, uncertainties remain high, stressing the importance of uncertainty quantification. Thus, the development of probabilistic loss models, like BT-FLEMO used in this study, which inherently provide uncertainty information are the way forward.

The relevance of flood hazards and impacts in Turkey: What can be learned from different disaster loss databases?

Science.gov (United States)

Koc, Gamze; Thieken, Annegret H.

2016-04-01

Despite technological development, better data and considerable efforts to reduce the impacts of natural hazards over the last two decades, natural disasters inflicted losses have caused enormous human and economic damages in Turkey. In particular earthquakes and flooding have caused enormous human and economic losses that occasionally amounted to 3 to 4% of the gross national product of Turkey (Genç, 2007). While there is a large body of literature on earthquake hazards and risks in Turkey, comparatively little is known about flood hazards and risks. Therefore, this study is aimed at investigating flood patterns, intensities and impacts, also providing an overview of the temporal and spatial distribution of flood losses by analysing different databases on disaster losses throughout Turkey. As input for more detailed event analyses, an additional aim is to retrieve the most severe flood events in the period between 1960 and 2014 from the databases. In general, data on disaster impacts are scarce in comparison to other scientific fields in natural hazard research, although the lack of reliable, consistent and comparable data is seen as a major obstacle for effective and long-term loss prevention. Currently, only a few data sets, especially the emergency events database EM-DAT (www.emdat.be) hosted and maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) since 1988, are publicly accessible and have become widely used to describe trends in disaster losses. However, loss data are subjected to various biases (Gall et al. 2009). Since Turkey is in the favourable position of having a distinct national disaster database since 2009, i.e. the Turkey Disaster Data Base (TABB), there is the unique opportunity to investigate flood impacts in Turkey in more detail as well as to identify biases and underlying reasons for mismatches with EM-DAT. To compare these two databases, the events of the two databases were reclassified by using the IRDR peril

Flood risk and insurance loss potential in the Thames Gateway

Science.gov (United States)

Eldridge, J.; Horn, D.

2009-04-01

The Thames Gateway, currently Europe's largest regeneration project, is an area of redevelopment located in the South East of England, with Government plans to create up to 160,000 new homes and 180,000 new jobs by 2016. Although the new development is intended to contribute £12bn annually to the economy, the potential flood risk is high, with much of the area situated on Thames tidal floodplain and vulnerable to both storm surges and peak river flows. This poses significant hazard to those inhabiting the area and has raised concern amongst the UK insurance industry, who would be liable for significant financial claims if a large flood event were to occur, particularly with respect to the number of new homes and businesses being built in flood risk areas. Flood risk and the potential damage to both lives and assets in vulnerable areas have gained substantial recognition, in light of recent flooding events, from both governmental agencies and in the public's awareness of flood hazard. This has resulted in a change in UK policy with planning policy for flood risk (PPS25, Planning Policy Statement 25) adopting a more strategic approach to development, as well as a new Flooding and Water Bill which is due for consultation in 2009. The Government and the Association of British Insurers, who represent the UK insurance industry, have also recently changed their Statement of Principles which guides provision of flood insurance in the future. This PhD research project aims to quantify flood risk in the Thames Gateway area with a view to evaluating the insurance loss potential under different insurance and planning scenarios. Using current sources of inundation extent, and incorporating varying insurance penetration rates and degrees of adoption of planning policy and guidance, it focuses on estimating flood risk under these different scenarios. This presentation introduces the development of the project and the theory and methodology which will be used to address the

Repetitive Acupuncture Point Treatment with Diluted Bee Venom Relieves Mechanical Allodynia and Restores Intraepidermal Nerve Fiber Loss in Oxaliplatin-Induced Neuropathic Mice.

Science.gov (United States)

Yeo, Ji-Hee; Yoon, Seo-Yeon; Kwon, Soon-Keun; Kim, Sol-Ji; Lee, Jang-Hern; Beitz, Alvin J; Roh, Dae-Hyun

2016-03-01

The chemotherapeutic agent, oxaliplatin, produces a robust painful neuropathy that results in the loss of intraepidermal nerve fibers (IENFs). We have previously reported that an acupuncture point (acupoint) injection of diluted bee venom (DBV) produces a temporary antiallodynic effect in oxaliplatin-induced neuropathic mice. Herein we show a significant long-lasting antinociceptive effect of repetitive DBV acupoint treatment on oxaliplatin-induced mechanical allodynia and a significant reduction in the loss of IENFs. DBV (0.1 mg/kg, subcutaneous) was administered once a day for 18 days beginning on day 15 after oxaliplatin injection. Immunohistochemistry for IENF was performed on the glabrous skin of the hind paw footpad using the pan-neuronal marker, protein gene product 9.5. A temporary increase in mechanical threshold was observed 60 minutes after a single DBV injection into the Zusanli acupoint, and this effect was enhanced over time with repetitive DBV treatments. The basal mechanical threshold before daily DBV injection also increased from day 7 after DBV injections, and peaked at day 14 after DBV treatment. Moreover, the oxaliplatin-induced loss of IENFs was significantly reduced in mice treated repetitively with DBV. Repetitive pretreatment with the α-2 adrenoceptor antagonist, yohimbine, (5 mg/kg, subcutaneous) completely prevented the antiallodynic effects and the increase in IENFs observed in mice treated repetitively with DBV. We showed that repetitive acupoint stimulation with DBV gradually and significantly reduced oxaliplatin-induced mechanical allodynia and restored the loss of IENFs in neuropathic mice via an α-2 adrenoceptor mechanism. Collectively, results of this study suggest that repetitive acupoint treatment with DBV can be a potential strategy for the management of chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. Copyright © 2016 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Application of Flood Nomograph for Flood Forecasting in Urban Areas

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Eui Hoon Lee

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Imperviousness has increased due to urbanization, as has the frequency of extreme rainfall events by climate change. Various countermeasures, such as structural and nonstructural measures, are required to prepare for these effects. Flood forecasting is a representative nonstructural measure. Flood forecasting techniques have been developed for the prevention of repetitive flood damage in urban areas. It is difficult to apply some flood forecasting techniques using training processes because training needs to be applied at every usage. The other flood forecasting techniques that use rainfall data predicted by radar are not appropriate for small areas, such as single drainage basins. In this study, a new flood forecasting technique is suggested to reduce flood damage in urban areas. The flood nomograph consists of the first flooding nodes in rainfall runoff simulations with synthetic rainfall data at each duration. When selecting the first flooding node, the initial amount of synthetic rainfall is 1 mm, which increases in 1 mm increments until flooding occurs. The advantage of this flood forecasting technique is its simple application using real-time rainfall data. This technique can be used to prepare a preemptive response in the process of urban flood management.

Flood loss assessment in the Kota Tinggi

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tam, T H; Ibrahim, A L; Rahman, M Z A; Mazura, Z

2014-01-01

Malaysia is free from several destructive and widespread natural disasters but frequently affected by floods, which caused massive flood damage. In 2006 and 2007, an extreme rainfall occured in many parts of Peninsular Malaysia, which caused severe flooding in several major cities. Kota Tinggi was chosen as study area as it is one the seriously affected area in Johor state. The aim of this study is to estimate potential flood damage to physical elements in Kota Tinggi. The flood damage map contains both qualitative and quantitative information which corresponds to the consequences of flooding. This study only focuses on physical elements. Three different damage functions were adopted to calculate the potential flood damage and flood depth is considered as the main parameter. The adopted functions are United States, the Netherlands and Malaysia. The estimated flood damage for housing using United States, the Netherlands and Malaysia was RM 350/m 2 RM 200/m 2 and RM 100/m 2 respectively. These results successfully showed the average flood damage of physical element. Such important information needed by local authority and government for urban spatial planning and aiming to reduce flood risk

Estimating insured residential losses from large flood scenarios on the Tone River, Japan - a data integration approach

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Okada, T.; McAneney, K. J.; Chen, K.

2011-12-01

Flooding on the Tone River, which drains the largest catchment area in Japan and is now home to 12 million people, poses significant risk to the Greater Tokyo Area. In April 2010, an expert panel in Japan, the Central Disaster Prevention Council, examined the potential for large-scale flooding and outlined possible mitigation measures in the Greater Tokyo Area. One of the scenarios considered closely mimics the pattern of flooding that occurred with the passage of Typhoon Kathleen in 1947 and would potentially flood some 680 000 households above floor level. Building upon that report, this study presents a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based data integration approach to estimate the insurance losses for residential buildings and contents as just one component of the potential financial cost. Using a range of publicly available data - census information, location reference data, insurance market information and flood water elevation data - this analysis finds that insurance losses for residential property alone could reach approximately 1 trillion JPY (US 12.5 billion). Total insurance losses, including commercial and industrial lines of business, are likely to be at least double this figure with total economic costs being much greater again. The results are sensitive to the flood scenario assumed, position of levee failures, local flood depths and extents, population and building heights. The Average Recurrence Interval (ARI) of the rainfall following Typhoon Kathleen has been estimated to be on the order of 200 yr; however, at this juncture it is not possible to put an ARI on the modelled loss since we cannot know the relative or joint probability of the different flooding scenarios. It is possible that more than one of these scenarios could occur simultaneously or that levee failure at one point might lower water levels downstream and avoid a failure at all other points. In addition to insurance applications, spatial analyses like that presented here have

Uni- and multi-variable modelling of flood losses: experiences gained from the Secchia river inundation event.

Science.gov (United States)

Carisi, Francesca; Domeneghetti, Alessio; Kreibich, Heidi; Schröter, Kai; Castellarin, Attilio

2017-04-01

Flood risk is function of flood hazard and vulnerability, therefore its accurate assessment depends on a reliable quantification of both factors. The scientific literature proposes a number of objective and reliable methods for assessing flood hazard, yet it highlights a limited understanding of the fundamental damage processes. Loss modelling is associated with large uncertainty which is, among other factors, due to a lack of standard procedures; for instance, flood losses are often estimated based on damage models derived in completely different contexts (i.e. different countries or geographical regions) without checking its applicability, or by considering only one explanatory variable (i.e. typically water depth). We consider the Secchia river flood event of January 2014, when a sudden levee-breach caused the inundation of nearly 200 km2 in Northern Italy. In the aftermath of this event, local authorities collected flood loss data, together with additional information on affected private households and industrial activities (e.g. buildings surface and economic value, number of company's employees and others). Based on these data we implemented and compared a quadratic-regression damage function, with water depth as the only explanatory variable, and a multi-variable model that combines multiple regression trees and considers several explanatory variables (i.e. bagging decision trees). Our results show the importance of data collection revealing that (1) a simple quadratic regression damage function based on empirical data from the study area can be significantly more accurate than literature damage-models derived for a different context and (2) multi-variable modelling may outperform the uni-variable approach, yet it is more difficult to develop and apply due to a much higher demand of detailed data.

Loss of life in flood events

Science.gov (United States)

Špitalar, Maruša

2013-04-01

Natural disasters per se give a negative connotation. They are destructive to material elements in a space, nature itself and represent a threat to peoples' lives and health. Floods, especially flash floods due to its power and happening suddenly cause extensive damage. Hence, they are hard to predict and are characterized with violent movement, lots of lives are lost. Floods are among natural hazards the one causing the highest number of fatalities. Having said that very important aspects are humans' vulnerability, risk perception, their behavior when confronted with hazardous situations and on the other hand issues related to adequate warning signs and canals of communication. It is very important to take into consideration this segments also and not mainly just structural measures. However the aim of this paper is to emphasis mainly the social aspects of floods. It consists of two main parts. First one refers to mans' vulnerability, risk perception when it comes to danger caused by rising waters and how does culture influences peoples' response and reaction to flood causalities. The second part consists of data about detailed information on circumstances of death that have been collected from several different sources from several EU countries. There has been also available information on the age and gender of people who lost lives in flood events. With gender males dominated among death people since tend to risk more in risky situations. There has been also defined a vulnerable age group among flood fatalities. Analysis of circumstance of death enabled us to define risky groups that are very important for flood managers. Further on this is very beneficial also for risk prevention, early warning systems and creating the best canals in order to information about upcoming danger would successfully reach people at hazardous areas and also for the others to avoid them.

Estimating insured residential losses from large flood scenarios on the Tone River, Japan – a data integration approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. Okada

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Flooding on the Tone River, which drains the largest catchment area in Japan and is now home to 12 million people, poses significant risk to the Greater Tokyo Area. In April 2010, an expert panel in Japan, the Central Disaster Prevention Council, examined the potential for large-scale flooding and outlined possible mitigation measures in the Greater Tokyo Area. One of the scenarios considered closely mimics the pattern of flooding that occurred with the passage of Typhoon Kathleen in 1947 and would potentially flood some 680 000 households above floor level. Building upon that report, this study presents a Geographical Information System (GIS-based data integration approach to estimate the insurance losses for residential buildings and contents as just one component of the potential financial cost. Using a range of publicly available data – census information, location reference data, insurance market information and flood water elevation data – this analysis finds that insurance losses for residential property alone could reach approximately 1 trillion JPY (US$ 12.5 billion. Total insurance losses, including commercial and industrial lines of business, are likely to be at least double this figure with total economic costs being much greater again. The results are sensitive to the flood scenario assumed, position of levee failures, local flood depths and extents, population and building heights. The Average Recurrence Interval (ARI of the rainfall following Typhoon Kathleen has been estimated to be on the order of 200 yr; however, at this juncture it is not possible to put an ARI on the modelled loss since we cannot know the relative or joint probability of the different flooding scenarios. It is possible that more than one of these scenarios could occur simultaneously or that levee failure at one point might lower water levels downstream and avoid a failure at all other points. In addition to insurance applications, spatial analyses like

Swiss Re Global Flood Hazard Zones: Know your flood risk

Science.gov (United States)

Vinukollu, R. K.; Castaldi, A.; Mehlhorn, J.

2012-12-01

Floods, among all natural disasters, have a great damage potential. On a global basis, there is strong evidence of increase in the number of people affected and economic losses due to floods. For example, global insured flood losses have increased by 12% every year since 1970 and this is expected to further increase with growing exposure in the high risk areas close to rivers and coastlines. Recently, the insurance industry has been surprised by the large extent of losses, because most countries lack reliable hazard information. One example has been the 2011 Thailand floods where millions of people were affected and the total economic losses were 30 billion USD. In order to assess the flood risk across different regions and countries, the flood team at Swiss Re based on a Geomorphologic Regression approach, developed in house and patented, produced global maps of flood zones. Input data for the study was obtained from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) elevation data, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) and HydroSHEDS. The underlying assumptions of the approach are that naturally flowing rivers shape their channel and flood plain according to basin inherent forces and characteristics and that the flood water extent strongly depends on the shape of the flood plain. On the basis of the catchment characteristics, the model finally calculates the probability of a location to be flooded or not for a defined return period, which in the current study was set to 100 years. The data is produced at a 90-m resolution for latitudes 60S to 60N. This global product is now used in the insurance industry to inspect, inform and/or insure the flood risk across the world.

77 FR 31814 - National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP); Insurance Coverage and Rates

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-30

... trade-off: Participating local governments would adopt and enforce flood mitigation standards that make... needed for flood mitigation efforts. This information is reflected in a community's Flood Insurance Rate... mitigation funding authorized by FEMA. Under the proposed rule, if the owner of a target repetitive flood...

Assessing the Influences of a Flood Diversion Project on Mitigating River Stage, Inundation Extent and Economic Loss

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei-Bo Chen

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Taiwan usually suffers severe inundation disasters during typhoons and strong rainstorms, and therefore flood mitigation is considered an important issue. To assess the effect of the Yuansantze flood diversion tunnel (YFDT on flood mitigation at the upstream reaches of the Keelung River, a three-dimensional, unstructured grid, Finite-Volume, primitive equation Community Ocean Model (FVCOM was used. The model was validated with observed data for water levels and inundation extent during different typhoon events. The simulated results show a good agreement with field measurements of water level with three historical typhoon events but underestimated the measured inundation extent with Typhoon Nari. The validated model was then applied to assess the flood mitigation and economic loss with the YFDT. The results demonstrated that the river level decreases approximately 3 m with the YFDT and that the inundation extent decreases by more than 50% in the Ruifang District with YFDT. The YDFT aims to not only mitigate hazards but also reduce economic losses. The average annual expected benefit after construction of the YFDT is approximately 184 million NTD in the Ruifang District.

Estimating the welfare loss to households from natural disasters in developing countries: a contingent valuation study of flooding in Vietnam

Science.gov (United States)

Navrud, Ståle; Tuan, Tran Huu; Tinh, Bui Duc

2012-01-01

Background Natural disasters have severe impacts on the health and well-being of affected households. However, we find evidence that official damage cost assessments for floods and other natural disasters in Vietnam, where households have little or no insurance, clearly underestimate the total economic damage costs of these events as they do not include the welfare loss from mortality, morbidity and well-being experienced by the households affected by the floods. This should send a message to the local communities and national authorities that higher investments in flood alleviation, reduction and adaptive measures can be justified since the social benefits of these measures in terms of avoided damage costs are higher than previously thought. Methods We pioneer the use of the contingent valuation (CV) approach of willingness-to-contribute (WTC) labour to a flood prevention program, as a measure of the welfare loss experienced by household due to a flooding event. In a face-to-face household survey of 706 households in the Quang Nam province in Central Vietnam, we applied this approach together with reported direct physical damage in order to shed light of the welfare loss experienced by the households. We asked about households’ WTC labour and multiplied their WTC person-days of labour by an estimate for their opportunity cost of time in order to estimate the welfare loss to households from the 2007 floods. Results The results showed that this contingent valuation (CV) approach of asking about willingness-to-pay in-kind avoided the main problems associated with applying CV in developing countries. Conclusion Thus, the CV approach of WTC labour instead of money is promising in terms of capturing the total welfare loss of natural disasters, and promising in terms of further application in other developing countries and for other types of natural disasters. PMID:22761603

Scientific relevance of Swiss property insurance data on flood risks and losses

Science.gov (United States)

Röthlisberger, Veronika; Bernet, Daniel; Keiler, Margreth

2015-04-01

The databases of Swiss flood insurance companies build a valuable but to date rarely used source of information for flood risk research. Detailed insights into the Swiss flood insurance system are crucial to evaluate the potential of the different databases for scientific analysis. Even though the flood insurance system modalities are mainly regulated on cantonal level there are some common principles that apply throughout Switzerland. First of all coverage against floods (and other particular natural hazards) is an integral part of every fire insurance policy for buildings or contents in Switzerland. This coupling of insurance as well as the statutory obligation to insure buildings in most of the cantons and movables in some of the cantons lead to a very high penetration. Second, in case of damage, the reinstatement costs (value as new) are compensated and third there are no (or little) deductible and co-pay. Thus the different datasets of the flood insurance companies would allow a very comprehensive data analysis. Moreover, insurance companies not only store electronically data about losses (typically date, amount of claims payment, cause of damage, identity of the insured object or policyholder) but also about insured objects. For insured objects the (insured) value and the details on the policy and its holder are the main feature to record. On buildings the insurance companies usually computerize additional information such as location, volume, year of construction or purpose of use. For the 19 (of total 26) cantons with a cantonal monopoly insurer the data of these insurance establishments have the additional value to represent (almost) the entire building stock of the respective canton. However, scientists face a wide range of the opportunities and challenges when using insurance data for flood research. The origin of flood insurance data implies that they are not generated for research but for business management. The presentation will highlighted pro and

Developing a Malaysia flood model

Science.gov (United States)

Haseldine, Lucy; Baxter, Stephen; Wheeler, Phil; Thomson, Tina

2014-05-01

Faced with growing exposures in Malaysia, insurers have a need for models to help them assess their exposure to flood losses. The need for an improved management of flood risks has been further highlighted by the 2011 floods in Thailand and recent events in Malaysia. The increasing demand for loss accumulation tools in Malaysia has lead to the development of the first nationwide probabilistic Malaysia flood model, which we present here. The model is multi-peril, including river flooding for thousands of kilometres of river and rainfall-driven surface water flooding in major cities, which may cause losses equivalent to river flood in some high-density urban areas. The underlying hazard maps are based on a 30m digital surface model (DSM) and 1D/2D hydraulic modelling in JFlow and RFlow. Key mitigation schemes such as the SMART tunnel and drainage capacities are also considered in the model. The probabilistic element of the model is driven by a stochastic event set based on rainfall data, hence enabling per-event and annual figures to be calculated for a specific insurance portfolio and a range of return periods. Losses are estimated via depth-damage vulnerability functions which link the insured damage to water depths for different property types in Malaysia. The model provides a unique insight into Malaysian flood risk profiles and provides insurers with return period estimates of flood damage and loss to property portfolios through loss exceedance curve outputs. It has been successfully validated against historic flood events in Malaysia and is now being successfully used by insurance companies in the Malaysian market to obtain reinsurance cover.

Flood Hazards - A National Threat

Science.gov (United States)

,

2006-01-01

In the late summer of 2005, the remarkable flooding brought by Hurricane Katrina, which caused more than $200 billion in losses, constituted the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. However, even in typical years, flooding causes billions of dollars in damage and threatens lives and property in every State. Natural processes, such as hurricanes, weather systems, and snowmelt, can cause floods. Failure of levees and dams and inadequate drainage in urban areas can also result in flooding. On average, floods kill about 140 people each year and cause $6 billion in property damage. Although loss of life to floods during the past half-century has declined, mostly because of improved warning systems, economic losses have continued to rise due to increased urbanization and coastal development.

Uncertainties and constraints on breaching and their implications for flood loss estimation.

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Muir Wood, Robert; Bateman, William

2005-06-15

Around the coasts of the southern North Sea, flood risk is mediated everywhere by the performance of natural and man-made flood defences. Under the conditions of extreme surge with tide water levels, the performance of the defences determines the extent of inland flooding. Sensitivity tests reveal the enormous increase in the volume of water that can pass through a defence once breaching is initiated, with a 1m reduction in sill elevation doubling the loss. Empirical observations of defence performance in major storm surges around the North Sea reveal some of the principal controls on breaching. For the same defence type, the maximum size and depth of a breach is a function of the integral of the hydraulic gradient across the defence, which is in turn determined by the elevation of the floodplain and the degree to which water can continue to flow inland away from the breach. The most extensive and lowest floodplains thereby "generate" the largest breaches. For surges that approach the crest height, the weaker the protection of the defence, the greater the number of breaches. Defence reinforcement reduces both the number and size of the breaches.

A new approach to flood loss estimation and vulnerability assessment for historic buildings in England

Science.gov (United States)

Stephenson, V.; D'Ayala, D.

2013-10-01

The recent increase in frequency and severity of flooding in the UK has led to a shift in the perception of risk associated with flood hazards. This has extended to the conservation community, and the risks posed to historic structures that suffer from flooding are particularly concerning for those charged with preserving and maintaining such buildings. In order to fully appraise the risks in a manner appropriate to the complex issue of preservation, a new methodology is proposed that studies the nature of vulnerability of such structures, and places it in the context of risk assessment, accounting for the vulnerable object and the subsequent exposure of that object to flood hazards. The testing of the methodology is carried out using three urban case studies and the results of the survey analysis provide key findings and guidance on the development of fragility curves for historic structures exposed to flooding. This occurs through appraisal of key vulnerability indicators related to building form, structural and fabric integrity, and preservation of architectural and archaeological values. This in turn facilitates the production of strategies for mitigating and managing the losses threatened by such extreme climate events.

Grade repetition and parents' perception of hearing loss: An analysis of data from children in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Gilani, Sapideh; Roditi, Rachel; Bhattacharyya, Neil

2017-03-01

To determine whether parent-perceived hearing problems are associated with grade repetition among children in the United States. Retrospective cohort analysis of a contemporary national database. The National Survey of Children's Health 2011 to 2012 was analyzed. Hearing loss, as perceived and reported by parents, was categorized as: no hearing problem, history of a hearing problem, or current hearing problem. Children never repeating a grade versus repeating one or more grades (kindergarten-high school) were identified. Univariate statistics and multivariate logistic regression analyzed the association of hearing problems with grade repetition. Patients with mental retardation, autism, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were excluded from the analysis. After adjusting for race, sex, and poverty level, odds ratios for grade repetition were computed. Among 66.1 million (average age, 8.3 years, 49.0% male) children, 97.3% never had a hearing problem, 1.7% had a history of a hearing problem, and 1.0% had a current hearing problem. Overall, 7.1% repeated a grade. Grade repetition was reported in 6.9% of children without a hearing problem versus 9.4% with a history of a hearing problem and 19.3% with a current hearing problem (P hearing problem demonstrated an odds ratio of 1.9 (95% confidence interval 0.82-4.13) for grade repetition, whereas a current hearing problem demonstrated an odds ratio of 3.0 (1.90-4.80). Parents' perception of children's hearing problems is strongly associated with grade repetition. This trend is noticed in elementary school more than in high school. 4. Laryngoscope, 127:741-745, 2017. © 2016 The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.

44 CFR 79.1 - Purpose.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... INSURANCE AND HAZARD MITIGATION National Flood Insurance Program FLOOD MITIGATION GRANTS § 79.1 Purpose. (a... the hazard mitigation grant programs made available under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, as... Repetitive Loss (SRL) and Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant programs mitigate losses from floods...

Fate of fertilizer nitrogen in flooded rice soil - I. Leaching losses of nitrogen

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Daftardar, S.Y.; Deb, D.L.; Datta, N.P.

1979-01-01

A greenhouse experiment on rice (Oryza sativa L. cv IR 22) was conducted under flooded conditions using CO( 15 NH 2 ) 2 , 15 NH 4 NO 3 and NH 4 ( 15 NO 3 ) to study the leaching loss of added fertilizer nitrogen in two typical rice soils. The loss of nitrogen was in the order: NO 3 -N (4 to 25.6 percent) > amide-N (1.2 to 16.2 percent) > NH 4 -N (0.07 to 0.3 percent). The basal applied urea was lost by percolation in the first month while the basal applied NO 3 -N was lost in the first 8 days. Leaching loss did not occur after split application of fertilizer nitrogen at primordial initiation stage. The loss of nitrogen in kaolinitic Dapoli clay loam soil was about 2.5 to 4.5 times more than that in montmorillonitic Karjat sandy loam soil. Cropping reduced the percolation loss of N by 40 to 60 percent. (auth.)

Flood model for Brazil

Science.gov (United States)

Palán, Ladislav; Punčochář, Petr

2017-04-01

Looking on the impact of flooding from the World-wide perspective, in last 50 years flooding has caused over 460,000 fatalities and caused serious material damage. Combining economic loss from ten costliest flood events (from the same period) returns a loss (in the present value) exceeding 300bn USD. Locally, in Brazil, flood is the most damaging natural peril with alarming increase of events frequencies as 5 out of the 10 biggest flood losses ever recorded have occurred after 2009. The amount of economic and insured losses particularly caused by various flood types was the key driver of the local probabilistic flood model development. Considering the area of Brazil (being 5th biggest country in the World) and the scattered distribution of insured exposure, a domain covered by the model was limited to the entire state of Sao Paolo and 53 additional regions. The model quantifies losses on approx. 90 % of exposure (for regular property lines) of key insurers. Based on detailed exposure analysis, Impact Forecasting has developed this tool using long term local hydrological data series (Agencia Nacional de Aguas) from riverine gauge stations and digital elevation model (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). To provide most accurate representation of local hydrological behaviour needed for the nature of probabilistic simulation, a hydrological data processing focused on frequency analyses of seasonal peak flows - done by fitting appropriate extreme value statistical distribution and stochastic event set generation consisting of synthetically derived flood events respecting realistic spatial and frequency patterns visible in entire period of hydrological observation. Data were tested for homogeneity, consistency and for any significant breakpoint occurrence in time series so the entire observation or only its subparts were used for further analysis. The realistic spatial patterns of stochastic events are reproduced through the innovative use of d-vine copula

Quantifying the effect of autonomous adaptation to global river flood projections: application to future flood risk assessments

Science.gov (United States)

Kinoshita, Youhei; Tanoue, Masahiro; Watanabe, Satoshi; Hirabayashi, Yukiko

2018-01-01

This study represents the first attempt to quantify the effects of autonomous adaptation on the projection of global flood hazards and to assess future flood risk by including this effect. A vulnerability scenario, which varies according to the autonomous adaptation effect for conventional disaster mitigation efforts, was developed based on historical vulnerability values derived from flood damage records and a river inundation simulation. Coupled with general circulation model outputs and future socioeconomic scenarios, potential future flood fatalities and economic loss were estimated. By including the effect of autonomous adaptation, our multimodel ensemble estimates projected a 2.0% decrease in potential flood fatalities and an 821% increase in potential economic losses by 2100 under the highest emission scenario together with a large population increase. Vulnerability changes reduced potential flood consequences by 64%-72% in terms of potential fatalities and 28%-42% in terms of potential economic losses by 2100. Although socioeconomic changes made the greatest contribution to the potential increased consequences of future floods, about a half of the increase of potential economic losses was mitigated by autonomous adaptation. There is a clear and positive relationship between the global temperature increase from the pre-industrial level and the estimated mean potential flood economic loss, while there is a negative relationship with potential fatalities due to the autonomous adaptation effect. A bootstrapping analysis suggests a significant increase in potential flood fatalities (+5.7%) without any adaptation if the temperature increases by 1.5 °C-2.0 °C, whereas the increase in potential economic loss (+0.9%) was not significant. Our method enables the effects of autonomous adaptation and additional adaptation efforts on climate-induced hazards to be distinguished, which would be essential for the accurate estimation of the cost of adaptation to

After the flood is before the next flood - post event review of the Central European Floods of June 2013. Insights, recommendations and next steps for future flood prevention

Science.gov (United States)

Szoenyi, Michael; Mechler, Reinhard; McCallum, Ian

2015-04-01

In early June 2013, severe flooding hit Central and Eastern Europe, causing extensive damage, in particular along the Danube and Elbe main watersheds. The situation was particularly severe in Eastern Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Based on the Post Event Review Capability (PERC) approach, developed by Zurich Insurance's Flood Resilience Program to provide independent review of large flood events, we examine what has worked well (best practice) and opportunities for further improvement. The PERC overall aims to thoroughly examine aspects of flood resilience, flood risk management and catastrophe intervention in order to help build back better after events and learn for future events. As our research from post event analyses shows a lot of losses are in fact avoidable by taking the right measures pre-event and these measures are economically - efficient with a return of 4 Euro on losses saved for every Euro invested in prevention on average (Wharton/IIASA flood resilience alliance paper on cost benefit analysis, Mechler et al. 2014) and up to 10 Euros for certain countries. For the 2013 flood events we provide analysis on the following aspects and in general identify a number of factors that worked in terms of reducing the loss and risk burden. 1. Understanding risk factors of the Central European Floods 2013 We review the precursors leading up to the floods in June, with an extremely wet May 2013 and an atypical V-b weather pattern that brought immense precipitation in a very short period to the watersheds of Elbe, Donau and partially the Rhine in the D-A-CH countries and researched what happened during the flood and why. Key questions we asked revolve around which protection and risk reduction approaches worked well and which did not, and why. 2. Insights and recommendations from the post event review The PERC identified a number of risk factors, which need attention if risk is to be reduced over time. • Yet another "100-year flood" - risk

Power Scaling of the Size Distribution of Economic Loss and Fatalities due to Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, and Floods in the USA

Science.gov (United States)

Tebbens, S. F.; Barton, C. C.; Scott, B. E.

2016-12-01

Traditionally, the size of natural disaster events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods is measured in terms of wind speed (m/sec), energy released (ergs), or discharge (m3/sec) rather than by economic loss or fatalities. Economic loss and fatalities from natural disasters result from the intersection of the human infrastructure and population with the size of the natural event. This study investigates the size versus cumulative number distribution of individual natural disaster events for several disaster types in the United States. Economic losses are adjusted for inflation to 2014 USD. The cumulative number divided by the time over which the data ranges for each disaster type is the basis for making probabilistic forecasts in terms of the number of events greater than a given size per year and, its inverse, return time. Such forecasts are of interest to insurers/re-insurers, meteorologists, seismologists, government planners, and response agencies. Plots of size versus cumulative number distributions per year for economic loss and fatalities are well fit by power scaling functions of the form p(x) = Cx-β; where, p(x) is the cumulative number of events with size equal to and greater than size x, C is a constant, the activity level, x is the event size, and β is the scaling exponent. Economic loss and fatalities due to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods are well fit by power functions over one to five orders of magnitude in size. Economic losses for hurricanes and tornadoes have greater scaling exponents, β = 1.1 and 0.9 respectively, whereas earthquakes and floods have smaller scaling exponents, β = 0.4 and 0.6 respectively. Fatalities for tornadoes and floods have greater scaling exponents, β = 1.5 and 1.7 respectively, whereas hurricanes and earthquakes have smaller scaling exponents, β = 0.4 and 0.7 respectively. The scaling exponents can be used to make probabilistic forecasts for time windows ranging from 1 to 1000 years

If you negate, you may forget: negated repetitions impair memory compared with affirmative repetitions.

Science.gov (United States)

Mayo, Ruth; Schul, Yaacov; Rosenthal, Meytal

2014-08-01

One of the most robust laws of memory is that repeated activation improves memory. Our study shows that the nature of repetition matters. Specifically, although both negated repetition and affirmative repetition improve memory compared with no repetition, negated repetition hinders memory compared with affirmative repetition. After showing participants different entities, we asked them about features of these entities, leading to either "yes" or "no" responses. Our findings show that correctly negating an incorrect feature of an entity elicits an active forgetting effect compared with correctly affirming its true features. For example, after seeing someone drink a glass of white wine, answering "no" to "was it red wine?" may lead one to greater memory loss of the individual drinking wine at all compared with answering "yes" to "was it white wine?" We find this negation-induced forgetting effect in 4 experiments that differ in (a) the meaning given for the negation, (b) the type of stimuli (visual or verbal), and (c) the memory measure (recognition or free recall). We discuss possible underlying mechanisms and offer theoretical and applied implications of the negation-induced forgetting effect in relation to other known inhibition effects. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Technical note Flood map development by coupling satellite maps ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Flood maps are important for local authorities in designing mitigation plans to minimise damage and loss due to flooding. In recent years, flood events in the Sarawak River Basin, Malaysia have caused damage to property, loss of life and disruption of productive activities. Currently, the available flood map for Sarawak River ...

Flood Foresight: A near-real time flood monitoring and forecasting tool for rapid and predictive flood impact assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Revilla-Romero, Beatriz; Shelton, Kay; Wood, Elizabeth; Berry, Robert; Bevington, John; Hankin, Barry; Lewis, Gavin; Gubbin, Andrew; Griffiths, Samuel; Barnard, Paul; Pinnell, Marc; Huyck, Charles

2017-04-01

The hours and days immediately after a major flood event are often chaotic and confusing, with first responders rushing to mobilise emergency responders, provide alleviation assistance and assess loss to assets of interest (e.g., population, buildings or utilities). Preparations in advance of a forthcoming event are becoming increasingly important; early warning systems have been demonstrated to be useful tools for decision markers. The extent of damage, human casualties and economic loss estimates can vary greatly during an event, and the timely availability of an accurate flood extent allows emergency response and resources to be optimised, reduces impacts, and helps prioritise recovery. In the insurance sector, for example, insurers are under pressure to respond in a proactive manner to claims rather than waiting for policyholders to report losses. Even though there is a great demand for flood inundation extents and severity information in different sectors, generating flood footprints for large areas from hydraulic models in real time remains a challenge. While such footprints can be produced in real time using remote sensing, weather conditions and sensor availability limit their ability to capture every single flood event across the globe. In this session, we will present Flood Foresight (www.floodforesight.com), an operational tool developed to meet the universal requirement for rapid geographic information, before, during and after major riverine flood events. The tool provides spatial data with which users can measure their current or predicted impact from an event - at building, basin, national or continental scales. Within Flood Foresight, the Screening component uses global rainfall predictions to provide a regional- to continental-scale view of heavy rainfall events up to a week in advance, alerting the user to potentially hazardous situations relevant to them. The Forecasting component enhances the predictive suite of tools by providing a local

Statistical approach to flood disaster management and risks ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In the past four decades, economic losses due to flood have increased tremendously and resulted in major loss of human lives and livelihoods, the destruction of economic and social infrastructure, as well as environmental damage. This study focuses on flood disaster management through the establishment of a flood ...

The 1421 St.Elisabeth flooding ‘event’ and the loss of “De Groote Waard”, the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Weerts, H.J.T.; Cohen, K.M.; Kleinhans, M.G.

2012-01-01

According to legend, a very severe storm in November 1421 caused catastrophic flooding and overnight loss of the larger part of “De Groote Waard”, a prosperous polder area in medieval The Netherlands. Allegedly, more than 25 villages were lost and thousands of people were killed. But what had really

Structural evaluation of multifunctional flood defenses

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Voorendt, M.Z.; Kothuis, Baukje; Kok, Matthijs

2017-01-01

Flood risk reduction aims to minimize losses in low-lying areas. One of the ways to reduce flood risks is to protect land by means of flood defenses. The Netherlands has a long tradition of flood protection and, therefore, a wide variety of technical reports written

Repetition and the Concept of Repetition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arne Grøn

2013-11-01

Full Text Available This paper offers a description of the meaning of the category of repetition. Firstly, it is pointed out that Constantin uses repetition as a concept that means the creation of epochs; the passing from Greece to Modernity is accomplished distinguishing between recollection, a concept that looks back to the past, and repetition, a concept that looks forward to future. Secondly, it is showed that the category of repetition, as a religious category, relates with what Climacus calls “ethic despair” and with what Vigilius calls “second ethics”; it is through repetition that it can be understood that sin finds its place in ethics and these shows the tension between it and dogmatics. And thirdly, it is showed that the descovery of the new category of repetition is a rediscovery of what Kierkegaard calls category of spirit; repetition has for its object the individuality, and coming to be oneself is what Kierkegaard undertands as liberty. At the end of the paper it is questioned if the category of repetition is inconsistent with the book Repetition.

Comprehensive flood mitigation and management in the Chi River Basin, Thailand

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kunitiyawichai, K.; Schultz, B.; Uhlenbrook, S.; Suryadi, F.X.; Corzo, G.A.

2011-01-01

Severe flooding of the flat downstream area of the Chi River Basin occurs frequently. This flooding is causing catastrophic loss of human lives, damage and economic loss. Effective flood management requires a broad and practical approach. Although flood disasters cannot completely be prevented,

Automated flood extent identification using WorldView imagery for the insurance industry

Science.gov (United States)

Geller, Christina

2017-10-01

Flooding is the most common and costly natural disaster around the world, causing the loss of human life and billions in economic and insured losses each year. In 2016, pluvial and fluvial floods caused an estimated 5.69 billion USD in losses worldwide with the most severe events occurring in Germany, France, China, and the United States. While catastrophe modeling has begun to help bridge the knowledge gap about the risk of fluvial flooding, understanding the extent of a flood - pluvial and fluvial - in near real-time allows insurance companies around the world to quantify the loss of property that their clients face during a flooding event and proactively respond. To develop this real-time, global analysis of flooded areas and the associated losses, a new methodology utilizing optical multi-spectral imagery from DigitalGlobe (DGI) WorldView satellite suite is proposed for the extraction of pluvial and fluvial flood extents. This methodology involves identifying flooded areas visible to the sensor, filling in the gaps left by the built environment (i.e. buildings, trees) with a nearest neighbor calculation, and comparing the footprint against an Industry Exposure Database (IE) to calculate a loss estimate. Full-automation of the methodology allows production of flood extents and associated losses anywhere around the world as required. The methodology has been tested and proven effective for the 2016 flood in Louisiana, USA.

Comprehensive flood economic losses: review of the potential damage and implementation of an agricultural impact model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mao Gwladys

2016-01-01

Full Text Available With an annual loss averaging 580 M€ between 1990 and 2014, floods are the main natural catastrophe (Nat Cat risk for the French Nat Cat compensation scheme. As part of its role in this scheme, the Caisse Centrale de Réassurance (CCR offers state guaranteed reinsurance programs and has been modelling the risk of flooding since 2003. This model is based on the traditional valuation approach of direct tangible costs which pairs a physical model with exposure through damage curves. CCR wishes now to widen the studied damage scope to insured and noninsured economic costs and has been collaborating with the SAF research laboratory from the Institute of Financial and Insurance Sciences (ISFA since 2014. CCR’s model has been used to estimate the insured direct damage to residential and non-residential properties and it is now being developed to include damage to vehicles, agriculture and network infrastructures. Research is also being carried out to take into account business interruptions and indirect losses using an Input-Output model. This article describes the undergoing work on model development to estimate the damage to agriculture.

Floods in Colorado

Science.gov (United States)

Follansbee, Robert; Sawyer, Leon R.

1948-01-01

The first records of floods in Colorado antedated the settlement of the State by about 30 years. These were records of floods on the Arkansas and Republican Rivers in 1826. Other floods noted by traders, hunters and emigrants, some of whom were on their way to the Far West, occurred in 1844 on the Arkansas River, and by inference on the South Platte River. Other early floods were those on the Purgatoire, the Lower Arkansas, and the San Juan Rivers about 1859. The most serious flood since settlement began was that on the Arkansas River during June 1921, which caused the loss of about 100 lives and an estimated property loss of $19,000,000. Many floods of lesser magnitude have occurred, and some of these have caused loss of life and very considerable property damage. Topography is the chief factor in determining the location of storms and resulting floods. These occur most frequently on the eastern slope of the Front Range. In the mountains farther west precipitation is insufficient to cause floods except during periods of melting snow, in June. In the southwestern part of the State, where precipitation during periods of melting snow is insufficient to cause floods, the severest floods yet experienced resulted from heavy rains in September 1909 and October 1911. In the eastern foothills region, usually below an altitude of about 7,500 feet and extending for a distance of about 50 miles east of the mountains, is a zone subject to rainfalls of great intensity known as cloudbursts. These cloudbursts are of short duration and are confined to very small areas. At times the intensity is so great as to make breathing difficult for those exposed to a storm. The areas of intense rainfall are so small that Weather Bureau precipitation stations have not been located in them. Local residents, being cloudburst conscious, frequently measure the rainfall in receptacles in their yards, and such records constitute the only source of information regarding the intensity. A flood

How useful are Swiss flood insurance data for flood vulnerability assessments?

Science.gov (United States)

Röthlisberger, Veronika; Bernet, Daniel; Zischg, Andreas; Keiler, Margreth

2015-04-01

The databases of Swiss flood insurance companies build a valuable but to date rarely used source of information on physical flood vulnerability. Detailed insights into the Swiss flood insurance system are crucial for using the full potential of the different databases for research on flood vulnerability. Insurance against floods in Switzerland is a federal system, the modalities are manly regulated on cantonal level. However there are some common principles that apply throughout Switzerland. First of all coverage against floods (and other particular natural hazards) is an integral part of every fire insurance policy for buildings or contents. This coupling of insurance as well as the statutory obligation to insure buildings in most of the cantons and movables in some of the cantons lead to a very high penetration. Second, in case of damage, the reinstatement costs (value as new) are compensated and third there are no (or little) deductible and co-pay. High penetration and the fact that the compensations represent a large share of the direct, tangible losses of the individual policy holders make the databases of the flood insurance companies a comprehensive and therefore valuable data source for flood vulnerability research. Insurance companies not only store electronically data about losses (typically date, amount of claims payment, cause of damage, identity of the insured object or policyholder) but also about insured objects. For insured objects the (insured) value and the details on the policy and its holder are the main feature to record. On buildings the insurance companies usually computerize additional information such as location, volume, year of construction or purpose of use. For the 19 (of total 26) cantons with a cantonal monopoly insurer the data of these insurance establishments have the additional value to represent (almost) the entire building stock of the respective canton. Spatial referenced insurance data can be used for many aspects of

Integrated risk assessment for the natomas basin (California) analysis of loss of life and emergency management for floods

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jonkman, S.N.; Hiel, L.A.; Bea, R.G.; Foster, H.; Tsioulou, A.; Arroyo, P.; Stallard, T.; Harris, L.

2012-01-01

This article assesses the risk to life for the Natomas Basin, a low-lying, rapidly urbanizing region in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in California. Using an empirical method, the loss of life is determined for a flood (high water), seismic, and sunny-day levee breach scenario. The analysis

Comprehensive flood mitigation and management in the Chi River Basin, Thailand

OpenAIRE

Kunitiyawichai, K.; Schultz, B.; Uhlenbrook, S.; Suryadi, F.X.; Corzo, G.A.

2011-01-01

Severe flooding of the flat downstream area of the Chi River Basin occurs frequently. This flooding is causing catastrophic loss of human lives, damage and economic loss. Effective flood management requires a broad and practical approach. Although flood disasters cannot completely be prevented, major part of potential loss of lives and damages can be reduced by comprehensive mitigation measures. In this paper, the effects of river normalisation, reservoir operation, green river (bypass), and ...

Flood Catastrophe Model for Designing Optimal Flood Insurance Program: Estimating Location-Specific Premiums in the Netherlands.

Science.gov (United States)

Ermolieva, T; Filatova, T; Ermoliev, Y; Obersteiner, M; de Bruijn, K M; Jeuken, A

2017-01-01

As flood risks grow worldwide, a well-designed insurance program engaging various stakeholders becomes a vital instrument in flood risk management. The main challenge concerns the applicability of standard approaches for calculating insurance premiums of rare catastrophic losses. This article focuses on the design of a flood-loss-sharing program involving private insurance based on location-specific exposures. The analysis is guided by a developed integrated catastrophe risk management (ICRM) model consisting of a GIS-based flood model and a stochastic optimization procedure with respect to location-specific risk exposures. To achieve the stability and robustness of the program towards floods with various recurrences, the ICRM uses stochastic optimization procedure, which relies on quantile-related risk functions of a systemic insolvency involving overpayments and underpayments of the stakeholders. Two alternative ways of calculating insurance premiums are compared: the robust derived with the ICRM and the traditional average annual loss approach. The applicability of the proposed model is illustrated in a case study of a Rotterdam area outside the main flood protection system in the Netherlands. Our numerical experiments demonstrate essential advantages of the robust premiums, namely, that they: (1) guarantee the program's solvency under all relevant flood scenarios rather than one average event; (2) establish a tradeoff between the security of the program and the welfare of locations; and (3) decrease the need for other risk transfer and risk reduction measures. © 2016 Society for Risk Analysis.

Development of Probabilistic Flood Inundation Mapping For Flooding Induced by Dam Failure

Science.gov (United States)

Tsai, C.; Yeh, J. J. J.

2017-12-01

A primary function of flood inundation mapping is to forecast flood hazards and assess potential losses. However, uncertainties limit the reliability of inundation hazard assessments. Major sources of uncertainty should be taken into consideration by an optimal flood management strategy. This study focuses on the 20km reach downstream of the Shihmen Reservoir in Taiwan. A dam failure induced flood herein provides the upstream boundary conditions of flood routing. The two major sources of uncertainty that are considered in the hydraulic model and the flood inundation mapping herein are uncertainties in the dam break model and uncertainty of the roughness coefficient. The perturbance moment method is applied to a dam break model and the hydro system model to develop probabilistic flood inundation mapping. Various numbers of uncertain variables can be considered in these models and the variability of outputs can be quantified. The probabilistic flood inundation mapping for dam break induced floods can be developed with consideration of the variability of output using a commonly used HEC-RAS model. Different probabilistic flood inundation mappings are discussed and compared. Probabilistic flood inundation mappings are hoped to provide new physical insights in support of the evaluation of concerning reservoir flooded areas.

Flood forecasting and early warning system for Dungun River Basin

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hafiz, I; Sidek, L M; Basri, H; Fukami, K; Hanapi, M N; Livia, L; Nor, M D

2013-01-01

Floods can bring such disasters to the affected dweller due to loss of properties, crops and even deaths. The damages to properties and crops by the severe flooding are occurred due to the increase in the economic value of the properties as well as the extent of the flood. Flood forecasting and warning system is one of the examples of the non-structural measures which can give early warning to the affected people. People who live near the flood-prone areas will be warned so that they can evacuate themselves and their belongings before the arrival of the flood. This can considerably reduce flood loss and damage and above all, the loss of human lives. Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS) model is a runoff analysis model converting rainfall into runoff for a given river basin. The simulation can be done using either ground or satellite-based rainfall to produce calculated discharge within the river. The calculated discharge is used to generate the flood inundation map within the catchment area for the selected flood event using Infowork RS.

An attempt to estimate the economic value of the loss of human life due to landslide and flood events in Italy

Science.gov (United States)

Salvati, Paola; Bianchi, Cinzia; Hussin, Haydar; Guzzetti, Fausto

2013-04-01

Landslide and flood events in Italy cause wide and severe damage to buildings and infrastructure, and are frequently involved in the loss of human life. The cost estimates of past natural disasters generally refer to the amount of public money used for the restoration of the direct damage, and most commonly do not account for all disaster impacts. Other cost components, including indirect losses, are difficult to quantify and, among these, the cost of human lives. The value of specific human life can be identified with the value of a statistical life (VLS), defined as the value that an individual places on a marginal change in their likelihood of death This is different from the value of an actual life. Based on information of fatal car accidents in Italy, we evaluate the cost that society suffers for the loss of life due to landslide and flood events. Using a catalogue of fatal landslide and flood events, for which information about gender and age of the fatalities is known, we determine the cost that society suffers for the loss of their life. For the purpose, we calculate the economic value in terms of the total income that the working-age population involved in the fatal events would have earned over the course of their life. For the computation, we use the pro-capita income calculated as the ratio between the GDP and the population value in Italy for each year, since 1980. Problems occur for children and retired people that we decided not to include in our estimates.

Health impacts of floods.

Science.gov (United States)

Du, Weiwei; FitzGerald, Gerard Joseph; Clark, Michele; Hou, Xiang-Yu

2010-01-01

Floods are the most common hazard to cause disasters and have led to extensive morbidity and mortality throughout the world. The impact of floods on the human community is related directly to the location and topography of the area, as well as human demographics and characteristics of the built environment. The aim of this study is to identify the health impacts of disasters and the underlying causes of health impacts associated with floods. A conceptual framework is developed that may assist with the development of a rational and comprehensive approach to prevention, mitigation, and management. This study involved an extensive literature review that located >500 references, which were analyzed to identify common themes, findings, and expert views. The findings then were distilled into common themes. The health impacts of floods are wide ranging, and depend on a number of factors. However, the health impacts of a particular flood are specific to the particular context. The immediate health impacts of floods include drowning, injuries, hypothermia, and animal bites. Health risks also are associated with the evacuation of patients, loss of health workers, and loss of health infrastructure including essential drugs and supplies. In the medium-term, infected wounds, complications of injury, poisoning, poor mental health, communicable diseases, and starvation are indirect effects of flooding. In the long-term, chronic disease, disability, poor mental health, and poverty-related diseases including malnutrition are the potential legacy. This article proposes a structured approach to the classification of the health impacts of floods and a conceptual framework that demonstrates the relationships between floods and the direct and indirect health consequences.

Crowdsourcing detailed flood data

Science.gov (United States)

Walliman, Nicholas; Ogden, Ray; Amouzad*, Shahrzhad

2015-04-01

Over the last decade the average annual loss across the European Union due to flooding has been 4.5bn Euros, but increasingly intense rainfall, as well as population growth, urbanisation and the rising costs of asset replacements, may see this rise to 23bn Euros a year by 2050. Equally disturbing are the profound social costs to individuals, families and communities which in addition to loss of lives include: loss of livelihoods, decreased purchasing and production power, relocation and migration, adverse psychosocial effects, and hindrance of economic growth and development. Flood prediction, management and defence strategies rely on the availability of accurate information and flood modelling. Whilst automated data gathering (by measurement and satellite) of the extent of flooding is already advanced it is least reliable in urban and physically complex geographies where often the need for precise estimation is most acute. Crowdsourced data of actual flood events is a potentially critical component of this allowing improved accuracy in situations and identifying the effects of local landscape and topography where the height of a simple kerb, or discontinuity in a boundary wall can have profound importance. Mobile 'App' based data acquisition using crowdsourcing in critical areas can combine camera records with GPS positional data and time, as well as descriptive data relating to the event. This will automatically produce a dataset, managed in ArcView GIS, with the potential for follow up calls to get more information through structured scripts for each strand. Through this local residents can provide highly detailed information that can be reflected in sophisticated flood protection models and be core to framing urban resilience strategies and optimising the effectiveness of investment. This paper will describe this pioneering approach that will develop flood event data in support of systems that will advance existing approaches such as developed in the in the UK

Quantification of uncertainty in flood risk assessment for flood protection planning: a Bayesian approach

Science.gov (United States)

Dittes, Beatrice; Špačková, Olga; Ebrahimian, Negin; Kaiser, Maria; Rieger, Wolfgang; Disse, Markus; Straub, Daniel

2017-04-01

Flood risk estimates are subject to significant uncertainties, e.g. due to limited records of historic flood events, uncertainty in flood modeling, uncertain impact of climate change or uncertainty in the exposure and loss estimates. In traditional design of flood protection systems, these uncertainties are typically just accounted for implicitly, based on engineering judgment. In the AdaptRisk project, we develop a fully quantitative framework for planning of flood protection systems under current and future uncertainties using quantitative pre-posterior Bayesian decision analysis. In this contribution, we focus on the quantification of the uncertainties and study their relative influence on the flood risk estimate and on the planning of flood protection systems. The following uncertainty components are included using a Bayesian approach: 1) inherent and statistical (i.e. limited record length) uncertainty; 2) climate uncertainty that can be learned from an ensemble of GCM-RCM models; 3) estimates of climate uncertainty components not covered in 2), such as bias correction, incomplete ensemble, local specifics not captured by the GCM-RCM models; 4) uncertainty in the inundation modelling; 5) uncertainty in damage estimation. We also investigate how these uncertainties are possibly reduced in the future when new evidence - such as new climate models, observed extreme events, and socio-economic data - becomes available. Finally, we look into how this new evidence influences the risk assessment and effectivity of flood protection systems. We demonstrate our methodology for a pre-alpine catchment in southern Germany: the Mangfall catchment in Bavaria that includes the city of Rosenheim, which suffered significant losses during the 2013 flood event.

Framework for probabilistic flood risk assessment in an Alpine region

Science.gov (United States)

Schneeberger, Klaus; Huttenlau, Matthias; Steinberger, Thomas; Achleitner, Stefan; Stötter, Johann

2014-05-01

Flooding is among the natural hazards that regularly cause significant losses to property and human lives. The assessment of flood risk delivers crucial information for all participants involved in flood risk management and especially for local authorities and insurance companies in order to estimate the possible flood losses. Therefore a framework for assessing flood risk has been developed and is introduced with the presented contribution. Flood risk is thereby defined as combination of the probability of flood events and of potential flood damages. The probability of occurrence is described through the spatial and temporal characterisation of flood. The potential flood damages are determined in the course of vulnerability assessment, whereas, the exposure and the vulnerability of the elements at risks are considered. Direct costs caused by flooding with the focus on residential building are analysed. The innovative part of this contribution lies on the development of a framework which takes the probability of flood events and their spatio-temporal characteristic into account. Usually the probability of flooding will be determined by means of recurrence intervals for an entire catchment without any spatial variation. This may lead to a misinterpretation of the flood risk. Within the presented framework the probabilistic flood risk assessment is based on analysis of a large number of spatial correlated flood events. Since the number of historic flood events is relatively small additional events have to be generated synthetically. This temporal extrapolation is realised by means of the method proposed by Heffernan and Tawn (2004). It is used to generate a large number of possible spatial correlated flood events within a larger catchment. The approach is based on the modelling of multivariate extremes considering the spatial dependence structure of flood events. The input for this approach are time series derived from river gauging stations. In a next step the

Impacts of Floods Events on Food Security

Science.gov (United States)

Caporali, E.; Pacetti, T.; Rulli, M. C.

2017-12-01

The analysis of the interactions among natural disasters and food security is particularly significant for developing countries where food availability (one of the four pillars of food security together with access, utilization and stability) can be highly jeopardize by extreme events that damage the primary access to food, i.e. the agriculture. The main objective of this study is to analyze the impact of flood events on food security for two disastrous flood events in Bangladesh on 2007 and in Pakistan on 2010, selected here as case studies based on the existing literature related to extreme floods.The adopted methodology integrates remote sensing data, agricultural statistics, and water footprint values in order to (i) evaluating the potentially affected agricultural areas; (ii) converting the affected areas into crop loss; (iii) estimating the associated calories and water footprint losses. In Bangladesh, the estimated lost rice is around 12.5% of the total potential production, which implies a 5.3% calories loss with respect to the total potential energy provided by rice and 4.4% of total WF associated to national food supply. In Pakistan, the results show a crops loss of 19% for sugarcane and 40% for rice, with a related calories loss of 8.5% and a WF loss of 13.5%.The results highlight the countries vulnerability to flood, being both countries strongly dependent on local agricultural production. The 2007 flood event reflected critically upon Bangladeshi food security, almost doubling the existing food deficit. The same happened in Pakistan where an already scarce food supply has been worsened by the 2010 flood.Method results are fully repeatable; whereas, for remote sensed data the sources of data are valid worldwide and the data regarding land use and crops characteristics are strongly site specific, which need to be carefully evaluated.These case studies stress the importance of integrating different analysis approaches to carry out an assessment of the

44 CFR 61.17 - Group Flood Insurance Policy.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... U.S.C. 5174) of an Individuals and Households Program (IHP) award for flood damage as a result of... flood-damage losses sustained by the insured property in the course of any subsequent flooding event..., DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY INSURANCE AND HAZARD MITIGATION National Flood Insurance Program INSURANCE...

Field note from Pakistan floods: Preventing future flood disasters

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcus Oxley

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Unusually heavy monsoon rains in Northern Pakistan have caused disproportionate levels of extreme flooding and unprecedented flood losses across the entire Indus River basin. Extensive land use changes and environmental degradation in the uplands and lowlands of the river basin together with the construction of a “built environment” out of balance with the functioning, capacities, scale and limits of the local ecosystems have exposed millions of people to an increased risk of extreme #ooding. The catastrophic nature of the August #ooding provides a unique opportunity to fundamentally change Pakistan’s current socio-economic development path by incorporating disaster risk reduction and climate change measures into the post-disaster recovery process to rebuild a safer, more resilient nation. In January 2005 one hundred and sixty-eight nations adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA2005-2015 to bring about a “substantial reduction in disaster losses” by 2015. Despite this global initiative a series of major disasters, including the recent flooding in Pakistan, all indicate that we are not on track to achieve the substantial reduction of disaster losses. The following fieldnote considers what can be done to accelerate progress towards implementation of the Hyogo Framework, drawing on insights and lessons learnt from the August flooding to understand how Pakistan and neighbouring countries can prevent a repeat of such catastrophic disasters in future years.

A methodology for flood risk appraisal in Lithuania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kriščiukaitienė Irena

2015-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a methodology for flood risk mapping as envisaged by the Directive on the Assessment and Management of Flood Risks [Directive 2007/60/EC]. Specifically, we aimed at identifying the types of flood damage that can be estimated given data availability in Lithuania. Furthermore, we present the main sources of data and the associated cost functions. The methodology covers the following main types of flood threats: risk to inhabitants, risk to economic activity, and social risk. A multi-criteria framework for aggregation of different risks is proposed to provide a comprehensive appraisal of flood risk. On the basis of the proposed research, flood risk maps have been prepared for Lithuania. These maps are available for each type of flood risk (i.e. inhabitants, economic losses, social risk as well as for aggregate risk. The results indicate that flood risk management is crucial for western and central Lithuania, whereas other parts of the country are not likely to suffer from significant losses due to flooding.

Risk-based damage potential and loss estimation of extreme flooding scenarios in the Austrian Federal Province of Tyrol

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Huttenlau

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Within the last decades serious flooding events occurred in many parts of Europe and especially in 2005 the Austrian Federal Province of Tyrol was serious affected. These events in general and particularly the 2005 event have sensitised decision makers and the public. Beside discussions pertaining to protection goals and lessons learnt, the issue concerning potential consequences of extreme and severe flooding events has been raised. Additionally to the general interest of the public, decision makers of the insurance industry, public authorities, and responsible politicians are especially confronted with the question of possible consequences of extreme events. Answers thereof are necessary for the implementation of preventive appropriate risk management strategies. Thereby, property and liability losses reflect a large proportion of the direct tangible losses. These are of great interest for the insurance sector and can be understood as main indicators to interpret the severity of potential events. The natural scientific-technical risk analysis concept provides a predefined and structured framework to analyse the quantities of affected elements at risk, their corresponding damage potentials, and the potential losses. Generally, this risk concept framework follows the process steps hazard analysis, exposition analysis, and consequence analysis. Additionally to the conventional hazard analysis, the potential amount of endangered elements and their corresponding damage potentials were analysed and, thereupon, concrete losses were estimated. These took the specific vulnerability of the various individual elements at risk into consideration. The present flood risk analysis estimates firstly the general exposures of the risk indicators in the study area and secondly analyses the specific exposures and consequences of five extreme event scenarios. In order to precisely identify, localize, and characterize the relevant risk indicators of buildings

Flood Catastrophe Model for Designing Optimal Flood Insurance Program : Estimating Location-Specific Premiums in the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ermolieva, T.; Filatova, Tatiana; Ermoliev, Y.; Obersteiner, M.; de Bruijn, K.M.; Jeuken, A.

2017-01-01

As flood risks grow worldwide, a well-designed insurance program engaging various stakeholders becomes a vital instrument in flood risk management. The main challenge concerns the applicability of standard approaches for calculating insurance premiums of rare catastrophic losses. This article

Improving Flood Damage Assessment Models in Italy

Science.gov (United States)

Amadio, M.; Mysiak, J.; Carrera, L.; Koks, E.

2015-12-01

The use of Stage-Damage Curve (SDC) models is prevalent in ex-ante assessments of flood risk. To assess the potential damage of a flood event, SDCs describe a relation between water depth and the associated potential economic damage over land use. This relation is normally developed and calibrated through site-specific analysis based on ex-post damage observations. In some cases (e.g. Italy) SDCs are transferred from other countries, undermining the accuracy and reliability of simulation results. Against this background, we developed a refined SDC model for Northern Italy, underpinned by damage compensation records from a recent flood event. Our analysis considers both damage to physical assets and production losses from business interruptions. While the first is calculated based on land use information, production losses are measured through the spatial distribution of Gross Value Added (GVA). An additional component of the model assesses crop-specific agricultural losses as a function of flood seasonality. Our results show an overestimation of asset damage from non-calibrated SDC values up to a factor of 4.5 for tested land use categories. Furthermore, we estimate that production losses amount to around 6 per cent of the annual GVA. Also, maximum yield losses are less than a half of the amount predicted by the standard SDC methods.

Flood Finder: Mobile-based automated water level estimation and mapping during floods

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pongsiriyaporn, B; Jariyavajee, C; Laoharawee, N; Narkthong, N; Pitichat, T; Goldin, S E

2014-01-01

Every year, Southeast Asia faces numerous flooding disasters, resulting in very high human and economic loss. Responding to a sudden flood is difficult due to the lack of accurate and up-to- date information about the incoming water status. We have developed a mobile application called Flood Finder to solve this problem. Flood Finder allows smartphone users to measure, share and search for water level information at specified locations. The application uses image processing to compute the water level from a photo taken by users. The photo must be of a known reference object with a standard size. These water levels are more reliable and consistent than human estimates since they are derived from an algorithmic measuring function. Flood Finder uploads water level readings to the server, where they can be searched and mapped by other users via the mobile phone app or standard browsers. Given the widespread availability of smartphones in Asia, Flood Finder can provide more accurate and up-to-date information for better preparation for a flood disaster as well as life safety and property protection

Accounting for wetlands loss in a changing climate in the estimation of long-term flood risks of Devils Lake, North Dakota

Science.gov (United States)

Gulbin, S.; Kirilenko, A.; Zhang, X.

2016-12-01

Endorheic (terminal) lakes with no water outlets are sensitive indicators of changes in climate and land cover in the watershed. Regional variation in precipitation pattern in the US Northern Great Plaines lead to a long term flooding of Devils Lake (DL), ND, leading to a 10-m water level rise in just two decades, with estimated flood mitigation costs of over $1 billion. While the climate change contribution to flooding has been established, the role of large scale land conversion to agriculture has not been researched. Wetlands play a very important part in hydrological balance by storing, absorbing and slowing peak water discharge. In ND, 49 % of wetlands are drained and converted to agriculture. We investigated the role of wetlands loss in DL flooding in current and future climate. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to simulate streamflow in all DL watershed subbasins. The model was calibrated using the 1991-2000 USGS gauge data for the first 10 years of study period and validated for the second 10 years (2001-2010), resulting in a satisfactory model performance compared against the measured water discharge in five streams in the watershed and against observed DL water level. A set of wetland loss scenarios were created based on the historical data and the Compound Topographic Index. To emulate the historical and future climate conditions, an ensemble of CMIP5 weather integrations based on IPCC AR5 RCP scenarios was downscaled with the MarkSim weather simulator. Model simulations indicate that the land use change in the DL watershed increased the impacts of climate change on hydrology by further elevating DL water level. Conversely, wetland restoration reduce the flooding and moderates risks of a potential high-impact DL overspill to the Sheyenne River watershed. Further research will concentrate on differentiation of climate change impacts under different types of land use change scenarios.

Societal and economic impacts of flood hazards in Turkey – an overview

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Koç Gamze

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Turkey has been severely affected by many natural hazards, in particular earthquakes and floods. Although there is a large body of literature on earthquake hazards and risks in Turkey, comparatively little is known about flood hazards and risks. Therefore, with this study it is aimed to investigate flood patterns, societal and economic impacts of flood hazards in Turkey, as well as providing a comparative overview of the temporal and spatial distribution of flood losses by analysing EM-DAT (Emergency Events Database and TABB (Turkey Disaster Data Base databases on disaster losses throughout Turkey for the years 1960-2014. The comparison of these two databases reveals big mismatches of the flood data, e.g. the reported number of events, number of affected people and economic loss, differ dramatically. With this paper, it has been explored reasons for mismatches. Biases and fallacies for loss data in the two databases has been discussed as well. Since loss data collection is gaining more and more attention, e.g. in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (SFDRR, the study could offer a base-work for developing guidelines and procedures on how to standardize loss databases and implement across the other hazard events, as well as substantial insights for flood risk mitigation and adaptation studies in Turkey and will offer valuable insights for other (European countries.

Effect of urea placement on leaching losses of nitrogen from flooded rice soils

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vlek, P.L.G.; Byrnes, B.H.; Craswell, E.T.

1980-01-01

In an effort to provide an explanation for the reported variability in fertilizer N efficiency from deep-placed urea on flooded rice, a set of controlled experiments was conducted to evaluate the effect of water percolation on fertilizer loss and plant uptake from 15 N labeled urea supergranules. Three soils of different texture (silt loam-clay) were subjected to various percolation rates (0-20 mm/day) while planted to rice which was harvested after approximately 40 days. The results indicate that moderate to high percolation through silt loam soil will lead to significant fertilizer N losses and drastically decrease the fertilizer uptake by plants. The permeability of the clay soil was too low for any leaching to take place. It is therefore concluded that deep placement of urea supergranules not be recommended in soils where percolation rates may exceed 5 mm/day, particularly if the cation exchange capacity of the soil is low. This experiment points to the need of evaluating and reporting the percolation rates in soils where experiments with supergranular urea are conducted. (orig.)

Effectiveness and reliability of emergency measures for flood prevention

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lendering, K.T.; Jonkman, S.N.; Kok, M.

2014-01-01

Floods in the summer of 2013 in Central Europe demonstrated once again that floods account for a large part of damage and loss of life caused by natural disasters. During flood threats emergency measures, such as sand bags and big bags, are often applied to strengthen the flood defences and attempt

Velocity Loss as a Variable for Monitoring Resistance Exercise.

Science.gov (United States)

González-Badillo, Juan José; Yañez-García, Juan Manuel; Mora-Custodio, Ricardo; Rodríguez-Rosell, David

2017-03-01

This study aimed to analyze: 1) the pattern of repetition velocity decline during a single set to failure against different submaximal loads (50-85% 1RM) in the bench press exercise; and 2) the reliability of the percentage of performed repetitions, with respect to the maximum possible number that can be completed, when different magnitudes of velocity loss have been reached within each set. Twenty-two men performed 8 tests of maximum number of repetitions (MNR) against loads of 50-55-60-65-70-75-80-85% 1RM, in random order, every 6-7 days. Another 28 men performed 2 separate MNR tests against 60% 1RM. A very close relationship was found between the relative loss of velocity in a set and the percentage of performed repetitions. This relationship was very similar for all loads, but particularly for 50-70% 1RM, even though the number of repetitions completed at each load was significantly different. Moreover, the percentage of performed repetitions for a given velocity loss showed a high absolute reliability. Equations to predict the percentage of performed repetitions from relative velocity loss are provided. By monitoring repetition velocity and using these equations, one can estimate, with considerable precision, how many repetitions are left in reserve in a bench press exercise set. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

The assessment of nitrogen balance under flooding and saturation circumstances using N-15

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Abouseeda, M; Khater, A [National Research Centre, Soil and Water Dept., Cairo (Egypt); Soliman, S [Atomic Energy Authority, Soil and Water Dept., P.O.Box 13759 Cairo (Egypt)

1995-10-01

The use{sup 15} N- balance techniques has already identified N-loss as a major problem in lowland rice management. Ammonium sulphate labelled with 5% N-15 atom ex. as a basal fertilized through special column in order to study the effect of flooding and saturation condition on the potential loss of nitrogen fertilizer. Rice straw at a rate of 1% was incorporated with the soil in order to study the role of rice straw (as a source of organic matter) on N-loss. Results show that the application of rice straw under flooding condition resulted in an increase of the biomass. It was observed that flooding circumstances may reduce the loss of nitrogen. Since N-recovery under flood and saturation rhizosphere (with plant) conditions were about 75% and 56%, respectively. The effect of rice root (rhizosphere) on nitrification has been observed. Results of flood and non flood rhizossphere show that the nitrogen recovery were about 75% and 86%, respectively. Results show an indirect evidence that the process of rhizosphere nitrification denitrification resulted in a significant amount of N-loss.It is evident that deep placement and flooded condition proved to be an effective means of reducing the potential of N-loss. 1 fig., 3 tabs.

The assessment of nitrogen balance under flooding and saturation circumstances using N-15

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Abouseeda, M.; Khater, A.; Soliman, S.

1995-01-01

The use 15 N- balance techniques has already identified N-loss as a major problem in lowland rice management. Ammonium sulphate labelled with 5% N-15 atom ex. as a basal fertilized through special column in order to study the effect of flooding and saturation condition on the potential loss of nitrogen fertilizer. Rice straw at a rate of 1% was incorporated with the soil in order to study the role of rice straw (as a source of organic matter) on N-loss. Results show that the application of rice straw under flooding condition resulted in an increase of the biomass. It was observed that flooding circumstances may reduce the loss of nitrogen. Since N-recovery under flood and saturation rhizosphere (with plant) conditions were about 75% and 56%, respectively. The effect of rice root (rhizosphere) on nitrification has been observed. Results of flood and non flood rhizossphere show that the nitrogen recovery were about 75% and 86%, respectively. Results show an indirect evidence that the process of rhizosphere nitrification denitrification resulted in a significant amount of N-loss.It is evident that deep placement and flooded condition proved to be an effective means of reducing the potential of N-loss. 1 fig., 3 tabs

Estimating design flood and HEC-RAS modelling approach for flood analysis in Bojonegoro city

Science.gov (United States)

Prastica, R. M. S.; Maitri, C.; Hermawan, A.; Nugroho, P. C.; Sutjiningsih, D.; Anggraheni, E.

2018-03-01

Bojonegoro faces flood every year with less advanced prevention development. Bojonegoro city development could not peak because the flood results material losses. It affects every sectors in Bojonegoro: education, politics, economy, social, and infrastructure development. This research aims to analyse and to ensure that river capacity has high probability to be the main factor of flood in Bojonegoro. Flood discharge analysis uses Nakayasu synthetic unit hydrograph for period of 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, and 100 years. They would be compared to the water maximum capacity that could be loaded by downstream part of Bengawan Solo River in Bojonegoro. According to analysis result, Bengawan Solo River in Bojonegoro could not able to load flood discharges. Another method used is HEC-RAS analysis. The conclusion that shown by HEC-RAS analysis has the same view. It could be observed that flood water loading is more than full bank capacity elevation in the river. To conclude, the main factor that should be noticed by government to solve flood problem is river capacity.

18 CFR 1304.407 - Development within flood control storage zones of TVA reservoirs.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... flood control storage zones of TVA reservoirs. 1304.407 Section 1304.407 Conservation of Power and Water... documentation related to flood control storage, provided the loss of flood control storage caused by the project... control storage. If this determination can be made, the applicant must then demonstrate how the loss of...

Promoting adaptive flood risk management: the role and potential of flood recovery mechanisms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Priest Sally J

2016-01-01

Full Text Available There is a high potential for recovery mechanisms to be used to incentivise the uptake of flood mitigation and loss reduction measures, undertake adaptation and promote community resilience. Indeed, creating a resilient response to flooding requires flood risk management approaches to be aligned and it needs to be ensured that recovery mechanisms to not provide disincentives for individuals and business to take proactive action to reduce risk. However, the degree to which it is desirable and effective for insurers and governments providing compensation to promote resilience and risk reduction depends upon how the cover or compensation is organised and the premiums which are charged. A review of international flood recovery mechanisms has been undertaken to identify firstly the types of schemes that exist and their characteristics. Analysis of existing instruments highlights that there are various potential approaches to encourage or require the uptake of flood mitigation and also discourage the construction of new development in high flood risk. However despite the presence of these instruments, those organising recovery mechanisms could be doing much more to incentivise increased resilience.

Estimated value of insurance premium due to Citarum River flood by using Bayesian method

Science.gov (United States)

Sukono; Aisah, I.; Tampubolon, Y. R. H.; Napitupulu, H.; Supian, S.; Subiyanto; Sidi, P.

2018-03-01

Citarum river flood in South Bandung, West Java Indonesia, often happens every year. It causes property damage, producing economic loss. The risk of loss can be mitigated by following the flood insurance program. In this paper, we discussed about the estimated value of insurance premiums due to Citarum river flood by Bayesian method. It is assumed that the risk data for flood losses follows the Pareto distribution with the right fat-tail. The estimation of distribution model parameters is done by using Bayesian method. First, parameter estimation is done with assumption that prior comes from Gamma distribution family, while observation data follow Pareto distribution. Second, flood loss data is simulated based on the probability of damage in each flood affected area. The result of the analysis shows that the estimated premium value of insurance based on pure premium principle is as follows: for the loss value of IDR 629.65 million of premium IDR 338.63 million; for a loss of IDR 584.30 million of its premium IDR 314.24 million; and the loss value of IDR 574.53 million of its premium IDR 308.95 million. The premium value estimator can be used as neither a reference in the decision of reasonable premium determination, so as not to incriminate the insured, nor it result in loss of the insurer.

Drivers of flood damage on event level

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kreibich, H.; Aerts, J. C. J. H.; Apel, H.

2016-01-01

Flood risk is dynamic and influenced by many processes related to hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Flood damage increased significantly over the past decades, however, resulting overall economic loss per event is an aggregated indicator and it is difficult to attribute causes to this increasing...... trend. Much has been learned about damaging processes during floods at the micro-scale, e.g. building level. However, little is known about the main factors determining the amount of flood damage on event level. Thus, we analyse and compare paired flood events, i.e. consecutive, similar damaging floods...... example are the 2002 and 2013 floods in the Elbe and Danube catchments in Germany. The 2002 flood caused the highest economic damage (EUR 11600 million) due to a natural hazard event in Germany. Damage was so high due to extreme flood hazard triggered by extreme precipitation and a high number...

Integrated remote sensing imagery and two-dimensional hydraulic modeling approach for impact evaluation of flood on crop yields

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Huili; Liang, Zhongyao; Liu, Yong; Liang, Qiuhua; Xie, Shuguang

2017-10-01

The projected frequent occurrences of extreme flood events will cause significant losses to crops and will threaten food security. To reduce the potential risk and provide support for agricultural flood management, prevention, and mitigation, it is important to account for flood damage to crop production and to understand the relationship between flood characteristics and crop losses. A quantitative and effective evaluation tool is therefore essential to explore what and how flood characteristics will affect the associated crop loss, based on accurately understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of flood evolution and crop growth. Current evaluation methods are generally integrally or qualitatively based on statistic data or ex-post survey with less diagnosis into the process and dynamics of historical flood events. Therefore, a quantitative and spatial evaluation framework is presented in this study that integrates remote sensing imagery and hydraulic model simulation to facilitate the identification of historical flood characteristics that influence crop losses. Remote sensing imagery can capture the spatial variation of crop yields and yield losses from floods on a grid scale over large areas; however, it is incapable of providing spatial information regarding flood progress. Two-dimensional hydraulic model can simulate the dynamics of surface runoff and accomplish spatial and temporal quantification of flood characteristics on a grid scale over watersheds, i.e., flow velocity and flood duration. The methodological framework developed herein includes the following: (a) Vegetation indices for the critical period of crop growth from mid-high temporal and spatial remote sensing imagery in association with agricultural statistics data were used to develop empirical models to monitor the crop yield and evaluate yield losses from flood; (b) The two-dimensional hydraulic model coupled with the SCS-CN hydrologic model was employed to simulate the flood evolution process

Flooding and its Effect on Trees

Science.gov (United States)

Stephen Bratkovich; Lisa Burban; Steven Katovich; Craig Locey; Jill Pokorny; Richard Wiest

1993-01-01

The 1993 floods along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries have caused tremendous losses in terms of human life, homes, businesses and crop production. Bottomland areas have been under water for many weeks. Landowners, homeowners, foresters, park managers, and others are concerned about the long-term effect of the flooding on the forests of the...

Repetitive Stress Injuries

Science.gov (United States)

... Safe Videos for Educators Search English Español Repetitive Stress Injuries KidsHealth / For Teens / Repetitive Stress Injuries What's ... t had any problems since. What Are Repetitive Stress Injuries? Repetitive stress injuries (RSIs) are injuries that ...

Impact of social preparedness on flood early warning systems

Science.gov (United States)

Girons Lopez, M.; Di Baldassarre, G.; Seibert, J.

2017-01-01

Flood early warning systems play a major role in the disaster risk reduction paradigm as cost-effective methods to mitigate flood disaster damage. The connections and feedbacks between the hydrological and social spheres of early warning systems are increasingly being considered as key aspects for successful flood mitigation. The behavior of the public and first responders during flood situations, determined by their preparedness, is heavily influenced by many behavioral traits such as perceived benefits, risk awareness, or even denial. In this study, we use the recency of flood experiences as a proxy for social preparedness to assess its impact on the efficiency of flood early warning systems through a simple stylized model and implemented this model using a simple mathematical description. The main findings, which are based on synthetic data, point to the importance of social preparedness for flood loss mitigation, especially in circumstances where the technical forecasting and warning capabilities are limited. Furthermore, we found that efforts to promote and preserve social preparedness may help to reduce disaster-induced losses by almost one half. The findings provide important insights into the role of social preparedness that may help guide decision-making in the field of flood early warning systems.

Flood impacts on a water distribution network

Science.gov (United States)

Arrighi, Chiara; Tarani, Fabio; Vicario, Enrico; Castelli, Fabio

2017-12-01

Floods cause damage to people, buildings and infrastructures. Water distribution systems are particularly exposed, since water treatment plants are often located next to the rivers. Failure of the system leads to both direct losses, for instance damage to equipment and pipework contamination, and indirect impact, since it may lead to service disruption and thus affect populations far from the event through the functional dependencies of the network. In this work, we present an analysis of direct and indirect damages on a drinking water supply system, considering the hazard of riverine flooding as well as the exposure and vulnerability of active system components. The method is based on interweaving, through a semi-automated GIS procedure, a flood model and an EPANET-based pipe network model with a pressure-driven demand approach, which is needed when modelling water distribution networks in highly off-design conditions. Impact measures are defined and estimated so as to quantify service outage and potential pipe contamination. The method is applied to the water supply system of the city of Florence, Italy, serving approximately 380 000 inhabitants. The evaluation of flood impact on the water distribution network is carried out for different events with assigned recurrence intervals. Vulnerable elements exposed to the flood are identified and analysed in order to estimate their residual functionality and to simulate failure scenarios. Results show that in the worst failure scenario (no residual functionality of the lifting station and a 500-year flood), 420 km of pipework would require disinfection with an estimated cost of EUR 21 million, which is about 0.5 % of the direct flood losses evaluated for buildings and contents. Moreover, if flood impacts on the water distribution network are considered, the population affected by the flood is up to 3 times the population directly flooded.

Flooding and Flood Management

Science.gov (United States)

Brooks, K.N.; Fallon, J.D.; Lorenz, D.L.; Stark, J.R.; Menard, Jason; Easter, K.W.; Perry, Jim

2011-01-01

Floods result in great human disasters globally and nationally, causing an average of $4 billion of damages each year in the United States. Minnesota has its share of floods and flood damages, and the state has awarded nearly $278 million to local units of government for flood mitigation projects through its Flood Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Since 1995, flood mitigation in the Red River Valley has exceeded $146 million. Considerable local and state funding has been provided to manage and mitigate problems of excess stormwater in urban areas, flooding of farmlands, and flood damages at road crossings. The cumulative costs involved with floods and flood mitigation in Minnesota are not known precisely, but it is safe to conclude that flood mitigation is a costly business. This chapter begins with a description of floods in Minneosta to provide examples and contrasts across the state. Background material is presented to provide a basic understanding of floods and flood processes, predication, and management and mitigation. Methods of analyzing and characterizing floods are presented because they affect how we respond to flooding and can influence relevant practices. The understanding and perceptions of floods and flooding commonly differ among those who work in flood forecasting, flood protection, or water resource mamnagement and citizens and businesses affected by floods. These differences can become magnified following a major flood, pointing to the need for better understanding of flooding as well as common language to describe flood risks and the uncertainty associated with determining such risks. Expectations of accurate and timely flood forecasts and our ability to control floods do not always match reality. Striving for clarity is important in formulating policies that can help avoid recurring flood damages and costs.

Temporal dynamics of high repetition rate pulsed single longitudinal ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

ing (GIG) cavity, single-mode dye laser pumped by high repetition rate ... in a high loss cavity, a detailed theoretical study and optimization of cavity ..... rate for high conversion efficiency and longer pulse width of the single-mode dye laser.

The application of enhanced conveyance calculations in flood prediction

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Forbes, G.; Pender, G. [Glasgow Univ. (United Kingdom). Dept. of Civil Engineering

2000-07-01

Over the past twenty years extensive research has been conducted on overbank flow behaviour during river floods. When the main channel flow interacts with flood plain flow, secondary losses other than bed friction act to retard the flow. Traditional one-dimensional modelling tools commonly used in the UK, such as ISIS or HEC-RAS, currently take no account of these secondary losses In an attempt to establish the nature and significance of secondary losses the flood channel facility (FCF) was constructed at HR Wallingford in 1987. As a direct result of the meandering channel series B experiments the James and Wark Method (1992) was developed to predict stage discharge relationships. For a given water level, this method will calculate a value of discharge taking into account the secondary losses. The paper will report on the modification of the method to fit into the river modelling software ISIS. Within the ISIS framework the James and Wark Method is used to calculate conveyance. The aim is to produce a more accurate flood prediction tool than currently exists. The newly developed software has been tested on laboratory data and shown to be highly accurate in both stage discharge and water level prediction. The software has since been applied to natural rivers that have experienced significant flood events. The paper will illustrate the significance of applying flume based conveyance calculation methods at the field scale. (orig.)

Spatio-temporal changes of exposure and vulnerability to floods in China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan-Jun Wang

2014-12-01

Full Text Available A socio-economic data set on China's historical flood losses for the period 1984–2012 was compiled to analyze the exposed population, economy, and crop area as well as the vulnerabilities of the population and economy to floods. The results revealed that the exposed population was approximately 126 persons km−2 per year when taking China as a whole; in terms of the economy, potential losses due to floods were estimated to be approximately 1.49 million CN¥ km−2 and the crop area exposed to floods covered 153 million hm2 per year. China's total exposure to floods significantly increased over the analysis period. The areas that showed the higher exposure were mainly located along the east coast. The population's vulnerability to floods showed a significantly increasing trend, however, the economic vulnerability showed a decreasing trend. The populations and economies that were most vulnerable to floods were in Hunan, Anhui, Chongqing, Jiangxi, and Hubei provinces. The municipalities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin showed the lowest vulnerabilities to floods.

May flood-poor periods be more dangerous than flood-rich periods?

Science.gov (United States)

Salinas, Jose Luis; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano; Viglione, Alberto; Kuil, Linda; Bloeschl, Guenter

2014-05-01

River floods are among the most devastating natural hazards experienced by populations that, since the earliest recorded civilisations, have settled in floodplains because they offer favourable conditions for trade, agriculture, and economic development. The occurrence of a flood may cause loss of lives and tremendous economic damages and, therefore, is rightly seen as a very negative event by the communities involved. Occurrence of many floods in a row is, of course, even more frustrating and is rightly considered a unbearable calamity. Unfortunately, the occurrence of many floods in a limited number of consecutive years is not unusual. In many places in the world, it has been observed that extreme floods do not arrive randomly but cluster in time into flood-poor and flood-rich periods consistent with the Hurst effect. If this is the case, when are the people more in danger? When should people be more scared? In flood-poor or flood-rich periods? In this work, a Socio-Hydrology model (Di Baldassarre et al., 2013; Viglione et al., 2014) is used to show that, maybe counter-intuitively, flood-poor periods may be more dangerous than flood-rich periods. The model is a conceptualisation of a hypothetical setting of a city at a river where a community evolves, making choices between flood management options on the floodplain. The most important feedbacks between the economic, political, technological and hydrological processes of the evolution of that community are represented in the model. In particular, the model also accounts in a dynamic way for the evolution of the the community awareness to flood risk. Occurrence of floods tends to increase peoples' recognition that their property is in an area that is potentially at risk of flooding, both at the scales of individuals and communities, which is one of the main reasons why flood coping actions are taken. It is shown through examples that frequent flood events may result in moderate damages because they ensure that the

Increasing stress on disaster risk finance due to large floods

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, Brenden; Hochrainer-Stigler, Stefan; Feyen, Luc; Aerts, Jeroen; Mechler, Reinhard; Botzen, Wouter; Bouwer, Laurens; Pflug, Georg; Rojas, Rodrigo; Ward, Philip

2014-05-01

Recent major flood disasters have shown that single extreme events can affect multiple countries simultaneously, which puts high pressure on trans-national risk reduction and risk transfer mechanisms. To date, little is known about such flood hazard interdependencies across regions, and the corresponding joint risks at regional to continental scales. Reliable information on correlated loss probabilities is crucial for developing robust insurance schemes and public adaptation funds, and for enhancing our understanding of climate change impacts. Here we show that extreme discharges are strongly correlated across European river basins and that these correlations can, or should, be used in national to continental scale risk assessment. We present probabilistic trends in continental flood risk, and demonstrate that currently observed extreme flood losses could more than double in frequency by 2050 under future climate change and socioeconomic development. The results demonstrate that accounting for tail dependencies leads to higher estimates of extreme losses than estimates based on the traditional assumption of independence between basins. We suggest that risk management for these increasing losses is largely feasible, and we demonstrate that risk can be shared by expanding risk transfer financing, reduced by investing in flood protection, or absorbed by enhanced solidarity between countries. We conclude that these measures have vastly different efficiency, equity and acceptability implications, which need to be taken into account in broader consultation, for which our analysis provides a basis.

Increasing stress on disaster-risk finance due to large floods

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, Brenden; Hochrainer-Stigler, Stefan; Feyen, Luc; Aerts, Jeroen C. J. H.; Mechler, Reinhard; Botzen, W. J. Wouter; Bouwer, Laurens M.; Pflug, Georg; Rojas, Rodrigo; Ward, Philip J.

2014-04-01

Recent major flood disasters have shown that single extreme events can affect multiple countries simultaneously, which puts high pressure on trans-national risk reduction and risk transfer mechanisms. So far, little is known about such flood hazard interdependencies across regions and the corresponding joint risks at regional to continental scales. Reliable information on correlated loss probabilities is crucial for developing robust insurance schemes and public adaptation funds, and for enhancing our understanding of climate change impacts. Here we show that extreme discharges are strongly correlated across European river basins. We present probabilistic trends in continental flood risk, and demonstrate that observed extreme flood losses could more than double in frequency by 2050 under future climate change and socio-economic development. We suggest that risk management for these increasing losses is largely feasible, and we demonstrate that risk can be shared by expanding risk transfer financing, reduced by investing in flood protection, or absorbed by enhanced solidarity between countries. We conclude that these measures have vastly different efficiency, equity and acceptability implications, which need to be taken into account in broader consultation, for which our analysis provides a basis.

Mechanism of Post-seismic Floods after the Wenchuan Earthquake ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

23

multiple post-seismic floods in the upper reaches of Minjiang river causing huge loss ...... out, and conference communication should be strengthen with large and ... forecast accuracy and scientific and foresight of decision-making in the flood ...

Coping with Pluvial Floods by Private Households

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Viktor Rözer

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Pluvial floods have caused severe damage to urban areas in recent years. With a projected increase in extreme precipitation as well as an ongoing urbanization, pluvial flood damage is expected to increase in the future. Therefore, further insights, especially on the adverse consequences of pluvial floods and their mitigation, are needed. To gain more knowledge, empirical damage data from three different pluvial flood events in Germany were collected through computer-aided telephone interviews. Pluvial flood awareness as well as flood experience were found to be low before the respective flood events. The level of private precaution increased considerably after all events, but is mainly focused on measures that are easy to implement. Lower inundation depths, smaller potential losses as compared with fluvial floods, as well as the fact that pluvial flooding may occur everywhere, are expected to cause a shift in damage mitigation from precaution to emergency response. However, an effective implementation of emergency measures was constrained by a low dissemination of early warnings in the study areas. Further improvements of early warning systems including dissemination as well as a rise in pluvial flood preparedness are important to reduce future pluvial flood damage.

An initial abstraction and constant loss model, and methods for estimating unit hydrographs, peak streamflows, and flood volumes for urban basins in Missouri

Science.gov (United States)

Huizinga, Richard J.

2014-01-01

Streamflow data, basin characteristics, and rainfall data from 39 streamflow-gaging stations for urban areas in and adjacent to Missouri were used by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Metropolitan Sewer District of St. Louis to develop an initial abstraction and constant loss model (a time-distributed basin-loss model) and a gamma unit hydrograph (GUH) for urban areas in Missouri. Study-specific methods to determine peak streamflow and flood volume for a given rainfall event also were developed.

Risk to life due to flooding in post-Katrina New Orleans

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, A.; Jonkman, S. N.; Van Ledden, M.

2015-01-01

Since the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city's hurricane protection system has been improved to provide protection against a hurricane load with a 1/100 per year exceedance frequency. This paper investigates the risk to life in post-Katrina New Orleans. In a flood risk analysis the probabilities and consequences of various flood scenarios have been analyzed for the central area of the city (the metro bowl) to give a preliminary estimate of the risk to life in the post-Katrina situation. A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model has been used to simulate flood characteristics of various breaches. The model for estimation of fatality rates is based on the loss of life data for Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that - depending on the flood scenario - the estimated loss of life in case of flooding ranges from about 100 to nearly 500, with the highest life loss due to breaching of the river levees leading to large flood depths. The probability and consequence estimates are combined to determine the individual risk and societal risk for New Orleans. When compared to risks of other large-scale engineering systems (e.g., other flood prone areas, dams and the nuclear sector) and acceptable risk criteria found in literature, the risks for the metro bowl are found to be relatively high. Thus, despite major improvements to the flood protection system, the flood risk to life of post-Katrina New Orleans is still expected to be significant. Indicative effects of reduction strategies on the risk level are discussed as a basis for further evaluation and discussion.

Flood Water Segmentation from Crowdsourced Images

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen, J. K.; Minsker, B. S.

2017-12-01

In the United States, 176 people were killed by flooding in 2015. Along with the loss of human lives is the economic cost which is estimated to be $4.5 billion per flood event. Urban flooding has become a recent concern due to the increase in population, urbanization, and global warming. As more and more people are moving into towns and cities with infrastructure incapable of coping with floods, there is a need for more scalable solutions for urban flood management.The proliferation of camera-equipped mobile devices have led to a new source of information for flood research. In-situ photographs captured by people provide information at the local level that remotely sensed images fail to capture. Applications of crowdsourced images to flood research required understanding the content of the image without the need for user input. This paper addresses the problem of how to automatically segment a flooded and non-flooded region in crowdsourced images. Previous works require two images taken at similar angle and perspective of the location when it is flooded and when it is not flooded. We examine three different algorithms from the computer vision literature that are able to perform segmentation using a single flood image without these assumptions. The performance of each algorithm is evaluated on a collection of labeled crowdsourced flood images. We show that it is possible to achieve a segmentation accuracy of 80% using just a single image.

Infiltration Losses Calculated for the Flash Flood in the Upper Catchment of Geru River, Galaţi County, Romania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Balan Isabela

2016-10-01

Full Text Available MIKE software created by Danish Institute of Hydraulics can be used to perform mathematical modelling of rainfall-runoff process on the hillslopes, resulting in a runoff hydrograph in the closing section of a catchment. The software includes a unitary hydrograph method - UHM in the hydrological module Rainfall - Runoff. Excess rainfall is routed to the river and transited through unit hydrograph method. The model divides the flood generating precipitation in excess rainfall (net rainfall and losses (infiltration.

Introduction to flood control science

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, Dong U; Ha, Jin Uk; Kim, Dong Ha; Shin, Hong Ryeol; Song, Seok Hwan; Kim, Jin Gyu; Moon, Heon Cheol

2003-01-01

This book covers introduction, industrialization disaster such as Bhopal and Chernobyl disaster, earthquake disaster, volcano disaster, avalanche disaster including loss allocation and prevention measures, and natural fire by showing California, Yellowstone park and similarity between fire and flood. It also introduces climate change and disaster, Earth's greenhouse effect and disaster due to current sea level rise, flood damage, drought disaster, famine and drought, prediction of drought, population problems, outlook of world population, and disaster prevention administration system of Korea.

Stimulating household flood risk mitigation investments through insurance and subsidies: an Agent-Based Modelling approach

Science.gov (United States)

Haer, Toon; Botzen, Wouter; de Moel, Hans; Aerts, Jeroen

2015-04-01

In the period 1998-2009, floods triggered roughly 52 billion euro in insured economic losses making floods the most costly natural hazard in Europe. Climate change and socio/economic trends are expected to further aggrevate floods losses in many regions. Research shows that flood risk can be significantly reduced if households install protective measures, and that the implementation of such measures can be stimulated through flood insurance schemes and subsidies. However, the effectiveness of such incentives to stimulate implementation of loss-reducing measures greatly depends on the decision process of individuals and is hardly studied. In our study, we developed an Agent-Based Model that integrates flood damage models, insurance mechanisms, subsidies, and household behaviour models to assess the effectiveness of different economic tools on stimulating households to invest in loss-reducing measures. Since the effectiveness depends on the decision making process of individuals, the study compares different household decision models ranging from standard economic models, to economic models for decision making under risk, to more complex decision models integrating economic models and risk perceptions, opinion dynamics, and the influence of flood experience. The results show the effectiveness of incentives to stimulate investment in loss-reducing measures for different household behavior types, while assuming climate change scenarios. It shows how complex decision models can better reproduce observed real-world behaviour compared to traditional economic models. Furthermore, since flood events are included in the simulations, the results provide an analysis of the dynamics in insured and uninsured losses for households, the costs of reducing risk by implementing loss-reducing measures, the capacity of the insurance market, and the cost of government subsidies under different scenarios. The model has been applied to the City of Rotterdam in The Netherlands.

Uncertainty and Sensitivity of Direct Economic Flood Damages: the FloodRisk Free and Open-Source Software

Science.gov (United States)

Albano, R.; Sole, A.; Mancusi, L.; Cantisani, A.; Perrone, A.

2017-12-01

The considerable increase of flood damages in the the past decades has shifted in Europe the attention from protection against floods to managing flood risks. In this context, the expected damages assessment represents a crucial information within the overall flood risk management process. The present paper proposes an open source software, called FloodRisk, that is able to operatively support stakeholders in the decision making processes with a what-if approach by carrying out the rapid assessment of the flood consequences, in terms of direct economic damage and loss of human lives. The evaluation of the damage scenarios, trough the use of the GIS software proposed here, is essential for cost-benefit or multi-criteria analysis of risk mitigation alternatives. However, considering that quantitative assessment of flood damages scenarios is characterized by intrinsic uncertainty, a scheme has been developed to identify and quantify the role of the input parameters in the total uncertainty of flood loss model application in urban areas with mild terrain and complex topography. By the concept of parallel models, the contribution of different module and input parameters to the total uncertainty is quantified. The results of the present case study have exhibited a high epistemic uncertainty on the damage estimation module and, in particular, on the type and form of the utilized damage functions, which have been adapted and transferred from different geographic and socio-economic contexts because there aren't depth-damage functions that are specifically developed for Italy. Considering that uncertainty and sensitivity depend considerably on local characteristics, the epistemic uncertainty associated with the risk estimate is reduced by introducing additional information into the risk analysis. In the light of the obtained results, it is evident the need to produce and disseminate (open) data to develop micro-scale vulnerability curves. Moreover, the urgent need to push

Potential of 3D City Models to assess flood vulnerability

Science.gov (United States)

Schröter, Kai; Bochow, Mathias; Schüttig, Martin; Nagel, Claus; Ross, Lutz; Kreibich, Heidi

2016-04-01

Vulnerability, as the product of exposure and susceptibility, is a key factor of the flood risk equation. Furthermore, the estimation of flood loss is very sensitive to the choice of the vulnerability model. Still, in contrast to elaborate hazard simulations, vulnerability is often considered in a simplified manner concerning the spatial resolution and geo-location of exposed objects as well as the susceptibility of these objects at risk. Usually, area specific potential flood loss is quantified on the level of aggregated land-use classes, and both hazard intensity and resistance characteristics of affected objects are represented in highly simplified terms. We investigate the potential of 3D City Models and spatial features derived from remote sensing data to improve the differentiation of vulnerability in flood risk assessment. 3D City Models are based on CityGML, an application scheme of the Geography Markup Language (GML), which represents the 3D geometry, 3D topology, semantics and appearance of objects on different levels of detail. As such, 3D City Models offer detailed spatial information which is useful to describe the exposure and to characterize the susceptibility of residential buildings at risk. This information is further consolidated with spatial features of the building stock derived from remote sensing data. Using this database a spatially detailed flood vulnerability model is developed by means of data-mining. Empirical flood damage data are used to derive and to validate flood susceptibility models for individual objects. We present first results from a prototype application in the city of Dresden, Germany. The vulnerability modeling based on 3D City Models and remote sensing data is compared i) to the generally accepted good engineering practice based on area specific loss potential and ii) to a highly detailed representation of flood vulnerability based on a building typology using urban structure types. Comparisons are drawn in terms of

Flood risk assessment and mapping for the Lebanese watersheds

Science.gov (United States)

Abdallah, Chadi; Hdeib, Rouya

2016-04-01

Of all natural disasters, floods affect the greatest number of people worldwide and have the greatest potential to cause damage. Nowadays, with the emerging global warming phenomenon, this number is expected to increase. The Eastern Mediterranean area, including Lebanon (10452 Km2, 4.5 M habitant), has witnessed in the past few decades an increase frequency of flooding events. This study profoundly assess the flood risk over Lebanon covering all the 17 major watersheds and a number of small sub-catchments. It evaluate the physical direct tangible damages caused by floods. The risk assessment and evaluation process was carried out over three stages; i) Evaluating Assets at Risk, where the areas and assets vulnerable to flooding are identified, ii) Vulnerability Assessment, where the causes of vulnerability are assessed and the value of the assets are provided, iii) Risk Assessment, where damage functions are established and the consequent damages of flooding are estimated. A detailed Land CoverUse map was prepared at a scale of 1/ 1 000 using 0.4 m resolution satellite images within the flood hazard zones. The detailed field verification enabled to allocate and characterize all elements at risk, identify hotspots, interview local witnesses, and to correlate and calibrate previous flood damages with the utilized models. All filed gathered information was collected through Mobile Application and transformed to be standardized and classified under GIS environment. Consequently; the general damage evaluation and risk maps at different flood recurrence periods (10, 50, 100 years) were established. Major results showed that floods in a winter season (December, January, and February) of 10 year recurrence and of water retention ranging from 1 to 3 days can cause total damages (losses) that reach 1.14 M for crop lands and 2.30 M for green houses. Whereas, it may cause 0.2 M to losses in fruit trees for a flood retention ranging from 3 to 5 days. These numbers differs

Dynamic building risk assessment theoretic model for rainstorm-flood utilization ABM and ABS

Science.gov (United States)

Lai, Wenze; Li, Wenbo; Wang, Hailei; Huang, Yingliang; Wu, Xuelian; Sun, Bingyun

2015-12-01

Flood is one of natural disasters with the worst loss in the world. It needs to assess flood disaster risk so that we can reduce the loss of flood disaster. Disaster management practical work needs the dynamic risk results of building. Rainstorm flood disaster system is a typical complex system. From the view of complex system theory, flood disaster risk is the interaction result of hazard effect objects, rainstorm flood hazard factors, and hazard environments. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is an important tool for complex system modeling. Rainstorm-flood building risk dynamic assessment method (RFBRDAM) was proposed using ABM in this paper. The interior structures and procedures of different agents in proposed meth had been designed. On the Netlogo platform, the proposed method was implemented to assess the building risk changes of the rainstorm flood disaster in the Huaihe River Basin using Agent-based simulation (ABS). The results indicated that the proposed method can dynamically assess building risk of the whole process for the rainstorm flood disaster. The results of this paper can provide one new approach for flood disaster building risk dynamic assessment and flood disaster management.

The influence of climate change on flood risks in France - first estimates and uncertainty analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Dumas, P.; Hallegatte, S.; Quintana-Seguì, P.; Martin, E.

2013-03-01

This paper proposes a methodology to project the possible evolution of river flood damages due to climate change, and applies it to mainland France. Its main contributions are (i) to demonstrate a methodology to investigate the full causal chain from global climate change to local economic flood losses; (ii) to show that future flood losses may change in a very significant manner over France; (iii) to show that a very large uncertainty arises from the climate downscaling technique, since two techniques with comparable skills at reproducing reference river flows give very different estimates of future flows, and thus of future local losses. The main conclusion is thus that estimating future flood losses is still out of reach, especially at local scale, but that future national-scale losses may change significantly over this century, requiring policy changes in terms of risk management and land-use planning.

Insurance against climate change and flood risk: Insurability and decision processes of insurers

Science.gov (United States)

Hung, Hung-Chih; Hung, Jia-Yi

2016-04-01

1. Background Major portions of the Asia-Pacific region is facing escalating exposure and vulnerability to climate change and flood-related extremes. This highlights an arduous challenge for public agencies to improve existing risk management strategies. Conventionally, governmental funding was majorly responsible and accountable for disaster loss compensation in the developing countries in Asia, such as Taiwan. This is often criticized as an ineffective and inefficient measure of dealing with flood risk. Flood insurance is one option within the toolkit of risk-sharing arrangement and adaptation strategy to flood risk. However, there are numerous potential barriers for insurance companies to cover flood damage, which would cause the flood risk is regarded as uninsurable. This study thus aims to examine attitudes within the insurers about the viability of flood insurance, the decision-making processes of pricing flood insurance and their determinants, as well as to examine potential solutions to encourage flood insurance. 2. Methods and data Using expected-utility theory, an insurance agent-based decision-making model was developed to examine the insurers' attitudes towards the insurability of flood risk, and to scrutinize the factors that influence their decisions on flood insurance premium-setting. This model particularly focuses on how insurers price insurance when they face either uncertainty or ambiguity about the probability and loss of a particular flood event occurring. This study considers the factors that are expected to affect insures' decisions on underwriting and pricing insurance are their risk perception, attitudes towards flood insurance, governmental measures (e.g., land-use planning, building codes, risk communication), expected probabilities and losses of devastating flooding events, as well as insurance companies' attributes. To elicit insurers' utilities about premium-setting for insurance coverage, the 'certainty equivalent,' 'probability

Declining vulnerability to river floods and the global benefits of adaptation.

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, Brenden; Winsemius, Hessel C; Aerts, Jeroen C J H; Coughlan de Perez, Erin; van Aalst, Maarten K; Kron, Wolfgang; Ward, Philip J

2015-05-05

The global impacts of river floods are substantial and rising. Effective adaptation to the increasing risks requires an in-depth understanding of the physical and socioeconomic drivers of risk. Whereas the modeling of flood hazard and exposure has improved greatly, compelling evidence on spatiotemporal patterns in vulnerability of societies around the world is still lacking. Due to this knowledge gap, the effects of vulnerability on global flood risk are not fully understood, and future projections of fatalities and losses available today are based on simplistic assumptions or do not include vulnerability. We show for the first time (to our knowledge) that trends and fluctuations in vulnerability to river floods around the world can be estimated by dynamic high-resolution modeling of flood hazard and exposure. We find that rising per-capita income coincided with a global decline in vulnerability between 1980 and 2010, which is reflected in decreasing mortality and losses as a share of the people and gross domestic product exposed to inundation. The results also demonstrate that vulnerability levels in low- and high-income countries have been converging, due to a relatively strong trend of vulnerability reduction in developing countries. Finally, we present projections of flood losses and fatalities under 100 individual scenario and model combinations, and three possible global vulnerability scenarios. The projections emphasize that materialized flood risk largely results from human behavior and that future risk increases can be largely contained using effective disaster risk reduction strategies.

Effects of the 2000 southern Mozambique floods on a marginal coral ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In early 2000 the southern part of Mozambique suffered the worst flooding in 50 years, causing fatalities and considerable material loss. This study aimed to investigate the impact of this flood on the coral communities in Xai-Xai lagoon. Benthic cover was assessed in January 2000 (before the floods) and September 2000 ...

Combining Satellite Measurements and Numerical Flood Prediction Models to Save Lives and Property from Flooding

Science.gov (United States)

Saleh, F.; Garambois, P. A.; Biancamaria, S.

2017-12-01

Floods are considered the major natural threats to human societies across all continents. Consequences of floods in highly populated areas are more dramatic with losses of human lives and substantial property damage. This risk is projected to increase with the effects of climate change, particularly sea-level rise, increasing storm frequencies and intensities and increasing population and economic assets in such urban watersheds. Despite the advances in computational resources and modeling techniques, significant gaps exist in predicting complex processes and accurately representing the initial state of the system. Improving flood prediction models and data assimilation chains through satellite has become an absolute priority to produce accurate flood forecasts with sufficient lead times. The overarching goal of this work is to assess the benefits of the Surface Water Ocean Topography SWOT satellite data from a flood prediction perspective. The near real time methodology is based on combining satellite data from a simulator that mimics the future SWOT data, numerical models, high resolution elevation data and real-time local measurement in the New York/New Jersey area.

Flood Hazards: Communicating Hydrology and Complexity to the Public

Science.gov (United States)

Holmes, R. R.; Blanchard, S. F.; Mason, R. R.

2010-12-01

Floods have a major impact on society and the environment. Since 1952, approximately 1,233 of 1,931 (64%) Federal disaster declarations were due directly to flooding, with an additional 297 due to hurricanes which had associated flooding. Although the overall average annual number of deaths due to flooding has decreased in the United States, the average annual flood damage is rising. According to the Munich Reinsurance Company in their publication “Schadenspiegel 3/2005”, during 1990s the world experienced as much as $500 billion in economic losses due to floods, highlighting the serious need for continued emphasis on flood-loss prevention measures. Flood-loss prevention has two major elements: mitigation (including structural flood-control measures and land-use planning and regulation) and risk awareness. Of the two, increasing risk awareness likely offers the most potential for protecting lives over the near-term and long-term sustainability in the coming years. Flood-risk awareness and risk-aware behavior is dependent on communication, involving both prescriptive and educational measures. Prescriptive measures (for example, flood warnings and stormwater ordinances) are and have been effective, but there is room for improvement. New communications technologies, particularly social media utilizing mobile, smart phones and text devices, for example, could play a significant role in increasing public awareness of long-term risk and near-term flood conditions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), for example, the Federal agency that monitors the Nation’s rivers, recently released a new service that can better connect the to the public to information about flood hazards. The new service, WaterAlert (URL: http://water.usgs.gov/wateralert/), allows users to set flood notification thresholds of their own choosing for any USGS real-time streamgage. The system then sends emails or text messages to subscribers whenever the threshold conditions are met, as often as the

Questioning Psychosocial Resilience After Flooding and the Consequences for Disaster Risk Reduction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Crabtree, Andrew

2013-01-01

, Bihar following the 2008 Kosi River flooding, it documents, 18 months post flood, that flood onset gave rise to symptoms related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (primarily re-experiencing). The villagers’ primary concern was livelihood loss which, together with their lack of hope for the future, led...

Strengthening flood warning systems: the benefits of encouraging social preparedness

Science.gov (United States)

Girons Lopez, Marc; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano; Seibert, Jan

2017-04-01

Flood warning and response have normally been focused on the technical aspects and disregarded the connections and feedbacks between the hydrological and social dimensions. An increasing body of research, however, points at the importance of considering socio-hydrological aspects to improve flood damage mitigation. One of the key factors is the preparedness of the public and first responders during flood situations, which is influenced by many behavioural traits such as perceived benefits, risk awareness, or denial. In this study, we investigate the impact of social preparedness on the efficiency of flood early warning systems by using the recency of flood experience as a proxy for social preparedness. To this end, we developed a stylised model and a synthetic data-set to perform a hypothetical analysis. The main findings point to the importance of social preparedness for flood loss mitigation, especially when the technical forecasting and warning capabilities are limited. More specifically, efforts to promote and preserve social preparedness may help to reduce disaster-induced losses by almost one half. The findings from this study provide insights into the importance of considering social preparedness in decision-making for disaster risk reduction.

Flood Risk Assessment as a Part of Integrated Flood and Drought Analysis. Case Study: Southern Thailand

Science.gov (United States)

Prabnakorn, Saowanit; Suryadi, Fransiscus X.; de Fraiture, Charlotte

2015-04-01

Flood and drought are two main meteorological catastrophes that have created adverse consequences to more than 80% of total casualties universally, 50% by flood and 31% by drought. Those natural hazards have the tendency of increasing frequency and degree of severity and it is expected that climate change will exacerbate their occurrences and impacts. In addition, growing population and society interference are the other key factors that pressure on and exacerbate the adverse impacts. Consequently, nowadays, the loss from any disasters becomes less and less acceptable bringing about more people's consciousness on mitigation measures and management strategies and policies. In general, due to the difference in their inherent characteristics and time occurrences flood and drought mitigation and protection have been separately implemented, managed, and supervised by different group of authorities. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop an integrated mitigation measure or a management policy able to surmount both problems to acceptable levels and is conveniently monitored by the same group of civil servants which will be economical in both short- and long-term. As aforementioned of the distinction of fundamental peculiarities and occurrence, the assessment processes of floods and droughts are separately performed using their own specific techniques. In the first part of the research flood risk assessment is focused in order to delineate the flood prone area. The study area is a river plain in southern Thailand where flooding is influenced by monsoon and depression. The work is mainly concentrated on physically-based computational modeling and an assortment of tools was applied for: data completion, areal rainfall interpolation, statistical distribution, rainfall-runoff analysis and flow model simulation. The outcome from the simulation can be concluded that the flood prone areas susceptible to inundation are along the riparian areas, particularly at the

Flooding of a large, passive, pressure-tube light water reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hejzlar, P.; Todreas, N.E.; Driscoll, M.J.

1997-01-01

A reactor concept has been developed which can survive loss of coolant accidents without scram and without replenishing primary coolant inventory, while maintaining safe temperature limits on the fuel and pressure tubes. The proposed concept is a pressure tube type reactor of similar design to CANDU reactors, but differing in three key aspects. First, a solid SiC-coated graphite fuel matrix is used in place of fuel pin bundles to enable the dissipation of decay heat from the fuel in the absence of primary coolant. Second, the heavy water coolant in the pressure tubes is replaced by light water, which also serves as the moderator. Finally, the calandria tank, surrounded by a graphite reflector, contains a low pressure gas instead of heavy water moderator, and this normally-voided calandria is connected to a light water heat sink. The cover gas displaces the light water from the calandria during normal operation, while during loss of coolant or loss of heat sink accidents it allows passive calandria flooding. Calandria flooding also provides redundant and diverse reactor shutdown. This paper describes the thermal hydraulic characteristics of the passively initiated, gravity driven calandria flooding process. Flooding the calandria space with light water is a unique and very important feature of the proposed pressure-tube light water reactor (PTLWR) concept. The flooding of the top row of fuel channels must be accomplished fast enough so that in the total loss of coolant, none of the critical components of the fuel channel, i.e. the pressure tube, the calandria tube, the matrix and the fuel, exceed their design limits. The flooding process has been modeled and shown to be rapid enough to maintain all components within their design limits. (orig.)

Flood risk management in the Souss watershed

Science.gov (United States)

Bouaakkaz, Brahim; El Abidine El Morjani, Zine; Bouchaou, Lhoussaine; Elhimri, Hamza

2018-05-01

Flooding is the most devasting natural hazards that causes more damage throughout the world. In 2016, for the fourth year in a row, it was the most costly natural disaster, in terms of global economic losses: 62 billion, according to a Benfield's 2016 annual report on climate and natural disasters [1]. The semi-arid to arid Souss watershed is vulnerable to floods, whose the intensity is becoming increasingly alarming and this area does not escape to the effects of this extreme event.. Indeed, the susceptibility of this region to this type of hazard is accentuated by its rapid evolution in terms of demography, uncontrolled land use, anthropogenic actions (uncontrolled urbanization, encroachment of the hydraulic public domain, overgrazing, clearing and deforestation).), and physical behavior of the environment (higher slope, impermeable rocks, etc.). It is in this context, that we have developed a strategic plan of action to manage this risk in the Souss basin in order to reduce the human, economic and environmental losses, after the modeling of the flood hazard in the study area, using georeferenced information systems (GIS), satellite remote sensing space and multi-criteria analysis techniques, as well as the history of major floods. This study, which generated the high resolution 30m flood hazard spatial distribution map of with accuracy of 85%, represents a decision tool to identify and prioririze area with high probability of hazard occurrence. It can also serve as a basis for urban evacuation plans for anticipating and preventing flood risk in the region, in order to ovoid any dramatic disaster.

Assessment and Adaptation to Climate Change-Related Floods Risks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jongman, B.; Winsemius, H.C.; Fraser, S.; Muis, S.; Ward, P.J.

2018-01-01

The flooding of rivers and coastlines is the most frequent and damaging of all natural hazards. Between 1980 and 2016, total direct damages exceeded $1.6 trillion, and at least 225,000 people lost their lives. Recent events causing major economic losses include the 2011 river flooding in Thailand

Towards a Flood Severity Index

Science.gov (United States)

Kettner, A.; Chong, A.; Prades, L.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Muir, S.; Amparore, A.; Slayback, D. A.; Poungprom, R.

2017-12-01

-economic data, such as population density, infrastructure, urbanization or equivalent information, is required for humanitarian actors to respond properly. In the end, expanded monitoring of floods, improved mitigation measures, but also effective communication of the severity of an event has the potential to reduce loss of life in future flood events.

Estimation of the Relative Severity of Floods in Small Ungauged Catchments for Preliminary Observations on Flash Flood Preparedness: A Case Study in Korea

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Eung Seok; Choi, Hyun Il

2012-01-01

An increase in the occurrence of sudden local flooding of great volume and short duration has caused significant danger and loss of life and property in Korea as well as many other parts of the World. Since such floods usually accompanied by rapid runoff and debris flow rise quite quickly with little or no advance warning to prevent flood damage, this study presents a new flash flood indexing methodology to promptly provide preliminary observations regarding emergency preparedness and response to flash flood disasters in small ungauged catchments. Flood runoff hydrographs are generated from a rainfall-runoff model for the annual maximum rainfall series of long-term observed data in the two selected small ungauged catchments. The relative flood severity factors quantifying characteristics of flood runoff hydrographs are standardized by the highest recorded maximum value, and then averaged to obtain the flash flood index only for flash flood events in each study catchment. It is expected that the regression equations between the proposed flash flood index and rainfall characteristics can provide the basis database of the preliminary information for forecasting the local flood severity in order to facilitate flash flood preparedness in small ungauged catchments. PMID:22690208

Prospects for development of unified global flood observation and prediction systems (Invited)

Science.gov (United States)

Lettenmaier, D. P.

2013-12-01

Floods are among the most damaging of natural hazards, with global flood losses in 2011 alone estimated to have exceeded $100B. Historically, flood economic damages have been highest in the developed world (due in part to encroachment on historical flood plains), but loss of life, and human impacts have been greatest in the developing world. However, as the 2011 Thailand floods show, industrializing countries, many of which do not have well developed flood protection systems, are increasingly vulnerable to economic damages as they become more industrialized. At present, unified global flood observation and prediction systems are in their infancy; notwithstanding that global weather forecasting is a mature field. The summary for this session identifies two evolving capabilities that hold promise for development of more sophisticated global flood forecast systems: global hydrologic models and satellite remote sensing (primarily of precipitation, but also of flood inundation). To this I would add the increasing sophistication and accuracy of global precipitation analysis (and forecast) fields from numerical weather prediction models. In this brief overview, I will review progress in all three areas, and especially the evolution of hydrologic data assimilation which integrates modeling and data sources. I will also comment on inter-governmental and inter-agency cooperation, and related issues that have impeded progress in the development and utilization of global flood observation and prediction systems.

Floods and Flash Flooding

Science.gov (United States)

Floods and flash flooding Now is the time to determine your area’s flood risk. If you are not sure whether you ... If you are in a floodplain, consider buying flood insurance. Do not drive around barricades. If your ...

Health Care Access and Utilization after the 2010 Pakistan Floods.

Science.gov (United States)

Jacquet, Gabrielle A; Kirsch, Thomas; Durrani, Aqsa; Sauer, Lauren; Doocy, Shannon

2016-10-01

Introduction The 2010 floods submerged more than one-fifth of Pakistan's land area and affected more than 20 million people. Over 1.6 million homes were damaged or destroyed and 2,946 direct injuries and 1,985 deaths were reported. Infrastructure damage was widespread, including critical disruptions to the power and transportation networks. Hypothesis Damage and loss of critical infrastructure will affect the population's ability to seek and access adequate health care for years to come. This study sought to evaluate factors associated with access to health care in the aftermath of the 2010 Pakistan floods. A population-proportional, randomized cluster-sampling survey method with 80 clusters of 20 (1,600) households of the flood-affected population was used. Heads of households were surveyed approximately six months after flood onset. Multivariate analysis was used to determine significance. A total of 77.8% of households reported needing health services within the first month after the floods. Household characteristics, including rural residence location, large household size, and lower pre- and post-flood income, were significantly associated (Pfloods was associated with urban residence location, suggesting that locating health care providers in rural areas may be difficult. Access to health services also was associated with post-flood income level, suggesting health resources are not readily available to households suffering great income losses. Jacquet GA , Kirsch T , Durrani A , Sauer L , Doocy S . Health care access and utilization after the 2010 Pakistan floods. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2016;31(5):485-491.

Elk River Watershed - Flood Study

Science.gov (United States)

Barnes, C. C.; Byrne, J. M.; MacDonald, R. J.; Lewis, D.

2014-12-01

Flooding has the potential to cause significant impacts to economic activities as well as to disrupt or displace populations. Changing climate regimes such as extreme precipitation events increase flood vulnerability and put additional stresses on infrastructure. Potential flooding from just under 100 (2009 NPRI Reviewed Facility Data Release, Environment Canada) toxic tailings ponds located in Canada increase risk to human safety and the environment. One such geotechnical failure spilt billions of litres of toxic tailings into the Fraser River watershed, British Columbia, when a tailings pond dam breach occurred in August 2014. Damaged and washed out roadways cut access to essential services as seen by the extensive floods that occurred in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in July 2014, and in Southern Alberta in 2013. Recovery efforts from events such as these can be lengthy, and have substantial social and economic impacts both in loss of revenue and cost of repair. The objective of this study is to investigate existing conditions in the Elk River watershed and model potential future hydrological changes that can increase flood risk hazards. By analyzing existing hydrology, meteorology, land cover, land use, economic, and settlement patterns a baseline is established for existing conditions in the Elk River watershed. Coupling the Generate Earth Systems Science (GENESYS) high-resolution spatial hydrometeorological model with flood hazard analysis methodology, high-resolution flood vulnerability base line maps are created using historical climate conditions. Further work in 2015 will examine possible impacts for a range of climate change and land use change scenarios to define changes to future flood risk and vulnerability.

Challenges of Modeling Flood Risk at Large Scales

Science.gov (United States)

Guin, J.; Simic, M.; Rowe, J.

2009-04-01

Flood risk management is a major concern for many nations and for the insurance sector in places where this peril is insured. A prerequisite for risk management, whether in the public sector or in the private sector is an accurate estimation of the risk. Mitigation measures and traditional flood management techniques are most successful when the problem is viewed at a large regional scale such that all inter-dependencies in a river network are well understood. From an insurance perspective the jury is still out there on whether flood is an insurable peril. However, with advances in modeling techniques and computer power it is possible to develop models that allow proper risk quantification at the scale suitable for a viable insurance market for flood peril. In order to serve the insurance market a model has to be event-simulation based and has to provide financial risk estimation that forms the basis for risk pricing, risk transfer and risk management at all levels of insurance industry at large. In short, for a collection of properties, henceforth referred to as a portfolio, the critical output of the model is an annual probability distribution of economic losses from a single flood occurrence (flood event) or from an aggregation of all events in any given year. In this paper, the challenges of developing such a model are discussed in the context of Great Britain for which a model has been developed. The model comprises of several, physically motivated components so that the primary attributes of the phenomenon are accounted for. The first component, the rainfall generator simulates a continuous series of rainfall events in space and time over thousands of years, which are physically realistic while maintaining the statistical properties of rainfall at all locations over the model domain. A physically based runoff generation module feeds all the rivers in Great Britain, whose total length of stream links amounts to about 60,000 km. A dynamical flow routing

Velocity loss as an indicator of neuromuscular fatigue during resistance training.

Science.gov (United States)

Sánchez-Medina, Luis; González-Badillo, Juan José

2011-09-01

This study aimed to analyze the acute mechanical and metabolic response to resistance exercise protocols (REP) differing in the number of repetitions (R) performed in each set (S) with respect to the maximum predicted number (P). Over 21 exercise sessions separated by 48-72 h, 18 strength-trained males (10 in bench press (BP) and 8 in squat (SQ)) performed 1) a progressive test for one-repetition maximum (1RM) and load-velocity profile determination, 2) tests of maximal number of repetitions to failure (12RM, 10RM, 8RM, 6RM, and 4RM), and 3) 15 REP (S × R[P]: 3 × 6[12], 3 × 8[12], 3 × 10[12], 3 × 12[12], 3 × 6[10], 3 × 8[10], 3 × 10[10], 3 × 4[8], 3 × 6[8], 3 × 8[8], 3 × 3[6], 3 × 4[6], 3 × 6[6], 3 × 2[4], 3 × 4[4]), with 5-min interset rests. Kinematic data were registered by a linear velocity transducer. Blood lactate and ammonia were measured before and after exercise. Mean repetition velocity loss after three sets, loss of velocity pre-post exercise against the 1-m·s load, and countermovement jump height loss (SQ group) were significant for all REP and were highly correlated to each other (r = 0.91-0.97). Velocity loss was significantly greater for BP compared with SQ and strongly correlated to peak postexercise lactate (r = 0.93-0.97) for both SQ and BP. Unlike lactate, ammonia showed a curvilinear response to loss of velocity, only increasing above resting levels when R was at least two repetitions higher than 50% of P. Velocity loss and metabolic stress clearly differs when manipulating the number of repetitions actually performed in each training set. The high correlations found between mechanical (velocity and countermovement jump height losses) and metabolic (lactate, ammonia) measures of fatigue support the validity of using velocity loss to objectively quantify neuromuscular fatigue during resistance training.

Informing Mitigation of Disaster Loss through Social Media: Evidence from Thailand

Science.gov (United States)

Allaire, M.

2015-12-01

This paper is the first to investigate the role of online information and social media in enabling households to reduce natural disaster losses. The historic 2011 Bangkok flood is utilized as a case study to assess how internet use allowed households to mitigate flood losses. This event was one of the first major disasters to affect an urban area with a substantial population connected to social media. The role of online information is investigated with a mixed methods approach, using both quantitative (propensity score matching and multivariate regression analysis) and qualitative (in-depth interviews) techniques. The study relies on two data sources - survey responses from 469 Bangkok households and in-depth interviews with internet users who are a subset of the survey participants. Propensity score matching indicates that social media use enabled households to reduce mean total losses by 37%, using a nearest neighbor estimator. Average loss reductions amounted to USD 3,708 to USD 4,886, depending on the matching estimator. In addition, regression analysis suggests that social media use is associated with lower flood losses (average reduction of USD 2,784). These reductions are notable when considering that total flood losses in 2011 averaged USD 4,903. Social media offered information that was not available from other sources, such as localized and nearly real-time updates of flood location and depth. With knowledge of current flood conditions, Bangkok households could move belongings to higher ground before floodwaters arrived. These findings suggest that utilizing social media users as sensors could better inform populations during natural disasters, particularly in locations that lack real-time, accurate flood monitoring networks. Therefore, expanded access to the internet and social could especially be useful in developing countries, ungagged basins, and highly complex urban environments. There is also an enormous opportunity for disseminating government

Methodology for flood risk analysis for nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wagner, D.P.; Casada, M.L.; Fussell, J.B.

1984-01-01

The methodology for flood risk analysis described here addresses the effects of a flood on nuclear power plant safety systems. Combining the results of this method with the probability of a flood allows the effects of flooding to be included in a probabilistic risk assessment. The five-step methodology includes accident sequence screening to focus the detailed analysis efforts on the accident sequences that are significantly affected by a flood event. The quantitative results include the flood's contribution to system failure probability, accident sequence occurrence frequency and consequence category occurrence frequency. The analysis can be added to existing risk assessments without a significant loss in efficiency. The results of two example applications show the usefulness of the methodology. Both examples rely on the Reactor Safety Study for the required risk assessment inputs and present changes in the Reactor Safety Study results as a function of flood probability

Flood of April 1975 at Williamston, Michigan

Science.gov (United States)

Knutilla, R.L.; Swallow, L.A.

1975-01-01

On April 18 between 5 p.m. and 12 p.m. the city of Williamston experienced an intense rain storm that caused the Red Cedar River and the many small streams in the area to overflow their banks and resulted in the most devastating flood since at least 1904. Local officials estimated a loss of \\$775,000 in property damage. Damage from flooding by the Red Cedar River was caused primarily by inundation, rather than by water moving at high velocity, as is common when many streams are flooded. During the flood of April 1975 many basements were flooded as well as the lower floors of some homes in the flood plain. Additional damage occurred in places when sewers backed up and flooded basements, and when ground water seeped through basement walls and floors—situations that affected many homes including those that were well outside of the flood plain.During the time of flooding the U.S. Geological Survey obtained aerial photography and data on a streamflow to document the disaster. This report shows on a photomosaic base map the extent of flooding along the Red Cedar River at Williamston, during the flood. It also presents data obtained at stream-gaging stations near Williamston, as well as the results of peak-flow discharge measurements made on the Red Cedar River at Michigan State Highway M-52 east of the city. Information on the magnitude of the flood can guide in making decisions pertaining to the use of flood-plains in the area. It is one of a series of reports on the April 1975 flood in the Lansing metropolitan area.

The necessity of flood risk maps on Timis River

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Aldescu, Geogr Catalin

2008-01-01

The paper aims to clarify the necessity of risk reduction in flood prone areas along the Timis River. Different methods to reduce risk in flood prone areas are analyzed as well. According to the EU Flood Directive it is mandatory for the European countries to develop flood maps and flood risk maps. The maps help to assess the vulnerable zones in the floodable (i.e. flood prone) areas. Many European countries have produced maps which identify areas prone to flooding events for specific known return periods. In Romania the flood risk maps have not been yet produced, but the process has been started to be implemented at the national and regional level, therefore the first results will be soon available. Banat Hydrographical Area was affected by severe floods on Timis River in 2000, 2005 and 2006. The 2005 flood was the most devastating one with large economic losses. As a result of these catastrophes the need for generating flood risk maps along the Timis. River was clearly stated. The water management experts can use these maps in order to identify the 'hot spots' in Timis catchment, give the people a better understanding of flood risk issues and help reducing flood risk more efficient in the identified vulnerable areas.

SERVIR-Africa: Developing an Integrated Platform for Floods Disaster Management in Africa

Science.gov (United States)

Macharia, Daniel; Korme, Tesfaye; Policelli, Fritz; Irwin, Dan; Adler, Bob; Hong, Yang

2010-01-01

SERVIR-Africa is an ambitious regional visualization and monitoring system that integrates remotely sensed data with predictive models and field-based data to monitor ecological processes and respond to natural disasters. It aims addressing societal benefits including floods and turning data into actionable information for decision-makers. Floods are exogenous disasters that affect many parts of Africa, probably second only to drought in terms of social-economic losses. This paper looks at SERVIR-Africa's approach to floods disaster management through establishment of an integrated platform, floods prediction models, post-event flood mapping and monitoring as well as flood maps dissemination in support of flood disaster management.

Climate change track in river floods in Europe

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Z. W. Kundzewicz

2015-06-01

Full Text Available A holistic perspective on changing river flood risk in Europe is provided. Economic losses from floods have increased, principally driven by the expanding exposure of assets at risk. Climate change (i.e. observed increase in precipitation intensity, decrease of snowpack and other observed climate changes might already have had an impact on floods. However, no gauge-based evidence had been found for a climate-driven, widespread change in the magnitude/frequency of floods during the last decades. There are strong regional and sub-regional variations in the trends. Moreover, it has not been generally possible to attribute rain-generated peak streamflow trends to anthropogenic climate change. Physical reasoning suggests that projected increases in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall would contribute to increases in rain-generated local floods, while less snowmelt flooding and earlier spring peak flows in snowmelt-fed rivers are expected. However, there is low confidence in future changes in flood magnitude and frequency resulting from climate change. The impacts of climate change on flood characteristics are highly sensitive to the detailed nature of those changes. Discussion of projections of flood hazard in Europe is offered. Attention is drawn to a considerable uncertainty - over the last decade or so, projections of flood hazard in Europe have largely changed.

The August 2002 flood in Salzburg / Austria experience gained and lessons learned from the ``Flood of the century''?

Science.gov (United States)

Wiesenegger, H.

2003-04-01

On the {12th} of August 2002 a low pressure system moved slowly from northern Italy towards Slovakia. It continuously carried moist air from the Mediterranean towards the northern rim of the Alps with the effect of wide-spread heavy rainfall in Salzburg and other parts of Austria. Daily precipitation amounts of 100 - 160 mm, in some parts even more, as well as rainfall intensities of 5 - 10 mm/h , combined with well saturated soils lead to a rare flood with a return period of 100 years and more. This rare hydrological event not only caused a national catastrophe with damages of several Billion Euro, but also endangered more than 200,000 people, and even killed some. As floods are dangerous, life-threatening, destructive, and certainly amongst the most frequent and costly natural disasters in terms of human hardship as well as economic loss, a great effort, therefore, has to be made to protect people against negative impacts of floods. In order to achieve this objective, various regulations in land use planning (flood maps), constructive measurements (river regulations and technical constructions) as well as flood warning systems, which are not suitable to prevent big floods, but offer in-time-warnings to minimize the loss of human lives, are used in Austria. HYDRIS (Hydrological Information System for flood forecasting in Salzburg), a modular river basin model, developed at Technical University Vienna and operated by the Hydrological Service of Salzburg, was used during the August 2002 flood providing accurate 3 to 4 hour forecasts within 3 % of the real peak discharge of the fast flowing River Salzach. The August {12^th}} flood was in many ways an exceptional, very fast happening event which took many people by surprise. At the gauging station Salzburg / Salzach (catchment area 4425 {km^2}) it took only eighteen hours from mean annual discharge (178 {m3/s}) to the hundred years flood (2300 {m3/s}). The August flood made clear, that there is a strong need for

Blending satellite data and RADAR tool for rapid flood damage assessment in Agriculture: A case study in Sri Lanka

Science.gov (United States)

Amarnath, Giriraj; Inada, Yoshiaki; Inoue, Ryosuke; Alahacoon, Niranga; Smakhtin, Vladimir

2014-05-01

During the catastrophic flooding it is critically important to estimate losses as it is essential for facilitating good decision making at the district, province and national levels of government and to appraise aid agencies for necessary assistance. Flood loss estimates can also be used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of alternative approaches to strengthening flood control measures. In the case of Sri Lanka there were limited knowledge and application system exist for carrying out rapid damage assessment for Agriculture in Sri Lanka. FAO has developed the tool "Rapid Agricultural Disaster Assessment Routine" (RADAR) based on theoretical approach that uses simple tools for assessing the impact on agriculture of a disastrous event. There are two knowledge bases that contain information needed for calculation of the value loss or damage. The procedure of rapid impact assessment implies the use of knowledge-bases, database and GIS. In this study, the user friendly application of RADAR system has been developed. Three components were considered including agriculture, livestock and farmers asset to estimate the losses. The application will allow estimating flood damage at various scales and this being tested at district level and specific example for the 2011 floods in Sri Lanka. In order to understand flood inundation cycle, time-series optical MODIS satellite data (2000-2011) and microwave ALOS PALSAR (2006-2011) were used to derive annual flood extent, flood duration and recurrent areas to identify flood risk and impact of seasonal flooding on agriculture. This study demonstrates how RADAR & satellite-based flood products can be effectively used for rapid damage assessment and managing the floods.

Yield loss and economic thresholds of yellow nutsedge in irrigated rice as a function of the onset of flood irrigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nixon da Rosa Westendorff

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus is adapted to flooding and reduces yield in irrigated rice. Information on the competitive ability of this weed with the crop and the size of the economic damage caused is lacking. Mathematical models quantify the damage to crops and support control decision-making. This study aimed to determine yield losses and economic thresholds (ET of this weed in the culture according to weed population and time of onset of irrigation of the crop. The field study was conducted in the agricultural year of 2010/2011 in Pelotas/RS to evaluate the competitive ability of BRS Querência in competition with different population levels of yellow nutsedge and two periods of onset of flood irrigation (14 and 21 days after emergence. The hyperbolic model satisfactorily estimated yield losses caused by yellow nutsedge. Population of yellow nutsedge was the variable most fitted to the model. The delay of seven days for the beginning of rice irrigation causes decrease in competitive ability of BRS Querência, and based on the ET calculated to the price paid for rice, it is necessary between two and thirteen plants m-2 weed to justify the control in the first and second period of irrigation, respectively. Increases in yield, price paid for rice and control efficiency of the herbicide, besides reduction of costs of controlling promote reduction of ET of yellow nutsedge in rice crops, justifying the adoption of control measures even at smaller weed population.

Effect of spatial adaptation measures on flood risk: study of coastal floods in Belgium

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Koks, E.E.; de Moel, H.; Aerts, J.C.J.H.; Bouwer, L.M.

2014-01-01

Flood risk in coastal zones is projected to increase due to climate change and socioeconomic changes. Over the last decades, population growth, increases in wealth, and urban expansion have been found to be the main causes for increasing losses in coastal areas. These changes may, however, be offset

Repetition and Translation Shifts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simon Zupan

2006-06-01

Full Text Available Repetition manifests itself in different ways and at different levels of the text. The first basic type of repetition involves complete recurrences; in which a particular textual feature repeats in its entirety. The second type involves partial recurrences; in which the second repetition of the same textual feature includes certain modifications to the first occurrence. In the article; repetitive patterns in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” and its Slovene translation; “Konec Usherjeve hiše”; are compared. The author examines different kinds of repetitive patterns. Repetitions are compared at both the micro- and macrostructural levels. As detailed analyses have shown; considerable microstructural translation shifts occur in certain types of repetitive patterns. Since these are not only occasional; sporadic phenomena; but are of a relatively high frequency; they reduce the translated text’s potential for achieving some of the gothic effects. The macrostructural textual property particularly affected by these shifts is the narrator’s experience as described by the narrative; which suffers a reduction in intensity.

Inundation Analysis of Reservoir Flood Based on Computer Aided Design (CAD and Digital Elevation Model (DEM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiqing Li

2018-04-01

Full Text Available GIS (Geographic Information System can be used to combine multiple hydrologic data and geographic data for FIA (Flood Impact Assessment. For a developing country like China, a lot of geographic data is in the CAD (Computer Aided Design format. The commonly used method for converting CAD into DEM may result in data loss. This paper introduces a solution for the conversion between CAD data and DEM data. The method has been applied to the FIA based on the topographic map of CAD in Hanjiang River. When compared with the other method, the new method solves the data loss problem. Besides, the paper use GIS to simulate the inundation range, area, and the depth distribution of flood backwater. Based on the analysis, the author concludes: (1 the differences of the inundation areas between the flood of HQ100 and the flood of HQ50 are small. (2 The inundation depth shows a decreasing trend along the upstream of the river. (3 The inundation area less than 4 m in flood of HQ50 is larger than that in flood of HQ100, the result is opposite when the inundation depth is greater than 4 m. (4 The flood loss is 392.32 million RMB for flood of HQ50 and 610.02 million RMB for flood of HQ100. The method can be applied to FIA.

Flood disaster risk assessment of rural housings--a case study of Kouqian Town in China.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Qi; Zhang, Jiquan; Jiang, Liupeng; Liu, Xingpeng; Tong, Zhijun

2014-04-03

Floods are a devastating kind of natural disaster. About half of the population in China lives in rural areas. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the flood disaster risk of rural housings. The results are valuable for guiding the rescue and relief goods layout. In this study, we take the severe flood disaster that happened at Kouqian Town in Jilin, China in 2010 as an example to build an risk assessment system for flood disaster on rural housings. Based on the theory of natural disaster risk formation and "3S" technology (remote sensing, geography information systems and global positioning systems), taking the rural housing as the bearing body, we assess the flood disaster risk from three aspects: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The hazard presented as the flood submerging range and depth. The exposure presented as the values of the housing and the property in it. The vulnerability presented as the relationship between the losses caused by flood and flood depth. We validate the model by the field survey after the flood disaster. The risk assessment results highly coincide with the field survey losses. This model can be used to assess the risk of other flood events in this area.

Observed and forecast flood-inundation mapping application-A pilot study of an eleven-mile reach of the White River, Indianapolis, Indiana

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Moon H.; Morlock, Scott E.; Arihood, Leslie D.; Kiesler, James L.

2011-01-01

Near-real-time and forecast flood-inundation mapping products resulted from a pilot study for an 11-mile reach of the White River in Indianapolis. The study was done by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Indiana Silver Jackets hazard mitigation taskforce members, the National Weather Service (NWS), the Polis Center, and Indiana University, in cooperation with the City of Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water. The pilot project showed that it is technically feasible to create a flood-inundation map library by means of a two-dimensional hydraulic model, use a map from the library to quickly complete a moderately detailed local flood-loss estimate, and automatically run the hydraulic model during a flood event to provide the maps and flood-damage information through a Web graphical user interface. A library of static digital flood-inundation maps was created by means of a calibrated two-dimensional hydraulic model. Estimated water-surface elevations were developed for a range of river stages referenced to a USGS streamgage and NWS flood forecast point colocated within the study reach. These maps were made available through the Internet in several formats, including geographic information system, Keyhole Markup Language, and Portable Document Format. A flood-loss estimate was completed for part of the study reach by using one of the flood-inundation maps from the static library. The Federal Emergency Management Agency natural disaster-loss estimation program HAZUS-MH, in conjunction with local building information, was used to complete a level 2 analysis of flood-loss estimation. A Service-Oriented Architecture-based dynamic flood-inundation application was developed and was designed to start automatically during a flood, obtain near real-time and forecast data (from the colocated USGS streamgage and NWS flood forecast point within the study reach

Flood Risk and Probabilistic Benefit Assessment to Support Management of Flood-Prone Lands: Evidence From Candaba Floodplains, Philippines

Science.gov (United States)

Juarez, A. M.; Kibler, K. M.; Sayama, T.; Ohara, M.

2016-12-01

Flood management decision-making is often supported by risk assessment, which may overlook the role of coping capacity and the potential benefits derived from direct use of flood-prone land. Alternatively, risk-benefit analysis can support floodplain management to yield maximum socio-ecological benefits for the minimum flood risk. We evaluate flood risk-probabilistic benefit tradeoffs of livelihood practices compatible with direct human use of flood-prone land (agriculture/wild fisheries) and nature conservation (wild fisheries only) in Candaba, Philippines. Located north-west to Metro Manila, Candaba area is a multi-functional landscape that provides a temporally-variable mix of possible land uses, benefits and ecosystem services of local and regional value. To characterize inundation from 1.3- to 100-year recurrence intervals we couple frequency analysis with rainfall-runoff-inundation modelling and remotely-sensed data. By combining simulated probabilistic floods with both damage and benefit functions (e.g. fish capture and rice yield with flood intensity) we estimate potential damages and benefits over varying probabilistic flood hazards. We find that although direct human uses of flood-prone land are associated with damages, for all the investigated magnitudes of flood events with different frequencies, the probabilistic benefits ( 91 million) exceed risks by a large margin ( 33 million). Even considering risk, probabilistic livelihood benefits of direct human uses far exceed benefits provided by scenarios that exclude direct "risky" human uses (difference of 85 million). In addition, we find that individual coping strategies, such as adapting crop planting periods to the flood pulse or fishing rather than cultivating rice in the wet season, minimize flood losses ( 6 million) while allowing for valuable livelihood benefits ($ 125 million) in flood-prone land. Analysis of societal benefits and local capacities to cope with regular floods demonstrate the

Predicting landscape sensitivity to present and future floods in the Pacific Northwest, USA

Science.gov (United States)

Mohammad Safeeq; Gordon E. Grant; Sarah L. Lewis; Brian Staab

2015-01-01

Floods are the most frequent natural disaster, causing more loss of life and property than any other in the USA. Floods also strongly influence the structure and function of watersheds, stream channels, and aquatic ecosystems. The Pacific Northwest is particularly vulnerable to climatically driven changes in flood frequency and magnitude, because snowpacks that...

Assessment of flooding in a best estimate thermal hydraulic code (WCOBRA/TRAC)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Takeuchi, K.; Young, M.Y.

1998-01-01

The performance of WCOBRA/TRAC code in predicting the flooding, the counter-current flow limit, is evaluated in three geometries important to nuclear reactor loss-of-coolant accident evaluation; a vertical pipe, a perforated plate, and a downcomer annulus. These flow limits are computationally evaluated through transient conditions. The flooding in the vertical pipe is compared with the classical Wallis flooding limit. The flooding on the perforated plate is compared with the Northwestern flooding data correlation. The downcomer flooding in 1/15th and 1/5th scale model is compared with the Creare data. Finally, full scale downcomer flooding is compared with the UPTF test data. The prediction capability of the code for the flooding is found to be very good. (orig.)

Probabilistic flood damage modelling at the meso-scale

Science.gov (United States)

Kreibich, Heidi; Botto, Anna; Schröter, Kai; Merz, Bruno

2014-05-01

Decisions on flood risk management and adaptation are usually based on risk analyses. Such analyses are associated with significant uncertainty, even more if changes in risk due to global change are expected. Although uncertainty analysis and probabilistic approaches have received increased attention during the last years, they are still not standard practice for flood risk assessments. Most damage models have in common that complex damaging processes are described by simple, deterministic approaches like stage-damage functions. Novel probabilistic, multi-variate flood damage models have been developed and validated on the micro-scale using a data-mining approach, namely bagging decision trees (Merz et al. 2013). In this presentation we show how the model BT-FLEMO (Bagging decision Tree based Flood Loss Estimation MOdel) can be applied on the meso-scale, namely on the basis of ATKIS land-use units. The model is applied in 19 municipalities which were affected during the 2002 flood by the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany. The application of BT-FLEMO provides a probability distribution of estimated damage to residential buildings per municipality. Validation is undertaken on the one hand via a comparison with eight other damage models including stage-damage functions as well as multi-variate models. On the other hand the results are compared with official damage data provided by the Saxon Relief Bank (SAB). The results show, that uncertainties of damage estimation remain high. Thus, the significant advantage of this probabilistic flood loss estimation model BT-FLEMO is that it inherently provides quantitative information about the uncertainty of the prediction. Reference: Merz, B.; Kreibich, H.; Lall, U. (2013): Multi-variate flood damage assessment: a tree-based data-mining approach. NHESS, 13(1), 53-64.

Urban Flood Damage and Greenhouse Scenarios. The Implications for Policy. An Example from Australia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, D.I.

1999-01-01

Urban flooding is often used as an illustration of the potentially adverse effects of greenhouse-induced climate change on extreme events. There is however, a paucity of studies that convert climate scenarios into changes in flood damage. This account summarises the use of modelling techniques, for three flood prone urban catchments in south eastern Australia, to assess changes to urban flood losses for the 'most wet' and ,most dry' scenarios for the year 2070. The most wet scenario indicates that annual average flood damage could increase within the range of 2.5 to 10 times, under the most dry scenario flood regimes would be similar to those experienced at present. The socio-economic scenarios based on the changes to flood losses are used to consider policy responses. It is unlikely that many local government authorities will respond because of lack of interest and because of major changes to the climate scenarios proposed over the last decade. Any response is likely to be incremental and accord with the 'no regrets' and 'the precautionary principle'. 21 refs

Multi-dimensional flood vulnerability assessment using data envelopment analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Zahid, Zalina; Saharizan, Nurul Syuhada; Hamzah, Paezah; Hussin, Siti Aida Sheikh; Khairi, Siti Shaliza Mohd

2017-11-01

Malaysia has been greatly impacted by flood during monsoon seasons. Even though flood prone areas are well identified, assessment on the vulnerability of the disaster is lacking. Assessment of flood vulnerability, defined as the potential for loss when a disaster occurs, is addressed in this paper. The focus is on the development of flood vulnerability measurement in 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia using a non-parametric approach of Data Envelopment Analysis. Scores for three dimensions of flood vulnerability (Population Vulnerability, Social Vulnerability and Biophysical) were calculated using secondary data of selected input and output variables across an 11-year period from 2004 to 2014. The results showed that Johor and Pahang were the most vulnerable to flood in terms of Population Vulnerability, followed by Kelantan, the most vulnerable to flood in terms of Social Vulnerability and Kedah, Pahang and Terengganu were the most vulnerable to flood in terms of Biophysical Vulnerability among the eleven states. The results also showed that the state of Johor, Pahang and Kelantan to be most vulnerable across the three dimensions. Flood vulnerability assessment is important as it provides invaluable information that will allow the authority to identify and develop plans for flood mitigation and to reduce the vulnerability of flood at the affected regions.

Challenges estimating the return period of extreme floods for reinsurance applications

Science.gov (United States)

Raven, Emma; Busby, Kathryn; Liu, Ye

2013-04-01

Mapping and modelling extreme natural events is fundamental within the insurance and reinsurance industry for assessing risk. For example, insurers might use a 1 in 100-year flood hazard map to set the annual premium of a property, whilst a reinsurer might assess the national scale loss associated with the 1 in 200-year return period for capital and regulatory requirements. Using examples from a range of international flood projects, we focus on exploring how to define what the n-year flood looks like for predictive uses in re/insurance applications, whilst considering challenges posed by short historical flow records and the spatial and temporal complexities of flood. First, we shall explore the use of extreme value theory (EVT) statistics for extrapolating data beyond the range of observations in a marginal analysis. In particular, we discuss how to estimate the return period of historical flood events and explore the impact that a range of statistical decisions have on these estimates. Decisions include: (1) selecting which distribution type to apply (e.g. generalised Pareto distribution (GPD) vs. generalised extreme value distribution (GEV)); (2) if former, the choice of the threshold above which the GPD is fitted to the data; and (3) the necessity to perform a cluster analysis to group flow peaks to temporally represent individual flood events. Second, we summarise a specialised multivariate extreme value model, which combines the marginal analysis above with dependence modelling to generate industry standard event sets containing thousands of simulated, equi-probable floods across a region/country. These events represent the typical range of anticipated flooding across a region and can be used to estimate the largest or most widespread events that are expected to occur. Finally, we summarise how a reinsurance catastrophe model combines the event set with detailed flood hazard maps to estimate the financial cost of floods; both the full event set and also

Capturing spatial and temporal patterns of widespread, extreme flooding across Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Busby, Kathryn; Raven, Emma; Liu, Ye

2013-04-01

Statistical characterisation of physical hazards is an integral part of probabilistic catastrophe models used by the reinsurance industry to estimate losses from large scale events. Extreme flood events are not restricted by country boundaries which poses an issue for reinsurance companies as their exposures often extend beyond them. We discuss challenges and solutions that allow us to appropriately capture the spatial and temporal dependence of extreme hydrological events on a continental-scale, which in turn enables us to generate an industry-standard stochastic event set for estimating financial losses for widespread flooding. By presenting our event set methodology, we focus on explaining how extreme value theory (EVT) and dependence modelling are used to account for short, inconsistent hydrological data from different countries, and how to make appropriate statistical decisions that best characterise the nature of flooding across Europe. The consistency of input data is of vital importance when identifying historical flood patterns. Collating data from numerous sources inherently causes inconsistencies and we demonstrate our robust approach to assessing the data and refining it to compile a single consistent dataset. This dataset is then extrapolated using a parameterised EVT distribution to estimate extremes. Our method then captures the dependence of flood events across countries using an advanced multivariate extreme value model. Throughout, important statistical decisions are explored including: (1) distribution choice; (2) the threshold to apply for extracting extreme data points; (3) a regional analysis; (4) the definition of a flood event, which is often linked with reinsurance industry's hour's clause; and (5) handling of missing values. Finally, having modelled the historical patterns of flooding across Europe, we sample from this model to generate our stochastic event set comprising of thousands of events over thousands of years. We then briefly

GIS Analysis of Flood Vulnerable Areas In Benin- Owena River Basin, Nigeria

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Adebayo Oluwasegun Hezekiah

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The frequency and intensity of flood disasters have become serious issues in the national development process of Nigeria as flood disasters have caused serious environmental damages, loss of human lives and other heavy economic losses;  putting the issue of disaster reduction and risk management higher on the policy agenda of affected governments, multilateral agencies and NGOs. The starting point of concrete flood disaster mitigation efforts is to identify the areas with higher risk levels and fashion out appropriate preventive and response mechanisms. This research paper explored the potentials of Geographic Information System (GIS in data capture, processing and analysis in identifying flood-prone areas for the purpose of planning for disaster mitigation and preparedness, using Benin-Owena river basin of Nigeria as a unit of analysis. The data used in this study were obtained from FORMECU and were entered and use to develop a flood risk information system. Analysis and capability of the developed system was illustrated and shown graphically. The research showed that over one thousand settlements harbouring over ten million people located in the study area are at grave risk of flooding.   Key words: Flood, Risk, Vulnerability, Geographical Information System (GIS, River -Basin

Interacting effects of insects and flooding on wood decomposition.

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Michael D Ulyshen

Full Text Available Saproxylic arthropods are thought to play an important role in wood decomposition but very few efforts have been made to quantify their contributions to the process and the factors controlling their activities are not well understood. In the current study, mesh exclusion bags were used to quantify how arthropods affect loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L. decomposition rates in both seasonally flooded and unflooded forests over a 31-month period in the southeastern United States. Wood specific gravity (based on initial wood volume was significantly lower in bolts placed in unflooded forests and for those unprotected from insects. Approximately 20.5% and 13.7% of specific gravity loss after 31 months was attributable to insect activity in flooded and unflooded forests, respectively. Importantly, minimal between-treatment differences in water content and the results from a novel test carried out separately suggest the mesh bags had no significant impact on wood mass loss beyond the exclusion of insects. Subterranean termites (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae: Reticulitermes spp. were 5-6 times more active below-ground in unflooded forests compared to flooded forests based on wooden monitoring stakes. They were also slightly more active above-ground in unflooded forests but these differences were not statistically significant. Similarly, seasonal flooding had no detectable effect on above-ground beetle (Coleoptera richness or abundance. Although seasonal flooding strongly reduced Reticulitermes activity below-ground, it can be concluded from an insignificant interaction between forest type and exclusion treatment that reduced above-ground decomposition rates in seasonally flooded forests were due largely to suppressed microbial activity at those locations. The findings from this study indicate that southeastern U.S. arthropod communities accelerate above-ground wood decomposition significantly and to a similar extent in both flooded and unflooded forests

Methodological Framework for Analysing Cascading Effects from Flood Events: The Case of Sukhumvit Area, Bangkok, Thailand

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Geofrey Hilly

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Impacts from floods in urban areas can be diverse and wide ranging. These can include the loss of human life, infrastructure and property damages, as well as other kinds of nuisance and inconvenience to urban life. Hence, the ability to identify and quantify wider ranging effects from floods is of the utmost importance to urban flood managers and infrastructure operators. The present work provides a contribution in this direction and describes a methodological framework for analysing cascading effects from floods that has been applied for the Sukhumvit area in Bangkok (Thailand. It demonstrates that the effects from floods can be much broader in their reach and magnitude than the sole impacts incurred from direct and immediate losses. In Sukhumvit, these include loss of critical services, assets and goods, traffic congestion and delays in transportation, loss of business and income, disturbances and discomfort to the residents, and all these can be traced with the careful analysis of cascading effects. The present work explored the use of different visualization options to present the findings. These include a casual loop diagram, a HAZUR resilience map, a tree diagram and GIS maps.

Study on Public Flood Risk Cognition and Behavioral Response Based on IEC Strategy

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Shen, Xin; Xu, Xiaofeng; Zhou, Guilin; Pan, Shaolin; Mi, Tengfei

2017-11-01

In order to disseminate knowledge and information on flood risks in flood-prone areas, raise public awareness of flood risks and reduce possible damage to the public, a questionnaire survey was coducted among 260 residents of nine selected communities in Jiaozhou City to learn the public awareness and behavioral response to flood risks at different early warning levels. IEC key information of flood risk awareness was modified and formulated through group discussions, in-depth individual interviews and on-site observation. The awareness of residents in the project area was enhanced through the public participation, environmental management and flood management training, which plays a very important role in reducing flood losses.

The influence of climate change on flood risks in France ­- first estimates and uncertainty analysis

OpenAIRE

Dumas , Patrice; Hallegatte , Sréphane; Quintana-Seguí , Pere; Martin , Eric

2013-01-01

International audience; Abstract. This paper proposes a methodology to project the possible evolution of river flood damages due to climate change, and applies it to mainland France. Its main contributions are (i) to demonstrate a methodology to investigate the full causal chain from global climate change to local economic flood losses; (ii) to show that future flood losses may change in a very significant manner over France; (iii) to show that a very large uncertainty arises from the climate...

Teaching land-use planning in a flood prone area with an educational software

Science.gov (United States)

Metzger, R.; Jaboyedoff, M.

2009-04-01

Teaching of flood risk mapping and mitigation is a necessary task in geosciences studies. However, there is often a gap between the theoretical hydraulic notions broached during the courses and the possibility to make use of them in practice by the students during supervised computer lab exercises. This is mainly due because professional models/software have a steep learning curve and the lecturer spend most of his time to explain how to make such or such operation with the software. To overcome this shortcoming, an educational software was developed, which is made of three main modules: 1) A user-friendly graphical interface (GUI), allowing for handling geographical data and creating thematic maps (Geographical Information System (GIS) module); 2) A flood model (hydrological and inundation models) part allowing for freeing student as much as possible from the repetitive and tedious tasks related to modeling issues, while keeping reasonable computational time; 3) A land use planning module, which allow for specifying mitigation measures (dikes and levees building, flood retention, renaturation, …) and for evaluating their effects by re-running the flood model. The main goal of this educational software is to provide a smooth approach to the modeling issue, without loosing the focus on the main task which is flood risk reduction.

FINANCING OF THE FLOOD DEFENSE IN DABULENI-CETATE AREA

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Dorin COSMA

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Danube River Basin has been frequently affected by floods in the last decades which often gained historical meanings, the latest being recorded in 2006 and 2013. The material losses were very high and on the Cetate-Dabuleni sector of the Danube river, after the floods of 2006 the dikes have been damaged and partially destroyed. In the end the Rast locality was almost total relocated. Following these events, we need to rebuild the flood defense infrastructure in the Lower Danube, but after the first assessment the costs are very high. With this paper we propose the ways of funding the flood protection works on the Lower Danube, research being done on the Cetate-Dabuleni Danube's sector.

Roles of repetitive sequences

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bell, G.I.

1991-12-31

The DNA of higher eukaryotes contains many repetitive sequences. The study of repetitive sequences is important, not only because many have important biological function, but also because they provide information on genome organization, evolution and dynamics. In this paper, I will first discuss some generic effects that repetitive sequences will have upon genome dynamics and evolution. In particular, it will be shown that repetitive sequences foster recombination among, and turnover of, the elements of a genome. I will then consider some examples of repetitive sequences, notably minisatellite sequences and telomere sequences as examples of tandem repeats, without and with respectively known function, and Alu sequences as an example of interspersed repeats. Some other examples will also be considered in less detail.

2d river flood modelling using Hec-ras 5.0

OpenAIRE

Flotats Palau, Joan

2016-01-01

Flooding may occur as an overflow of water from water bodies, such as a river, lake or ocean, in which the water overtops or breaks levees, resulting in some of that water escaping its usual boundaries. Floods also occur in rivers when the flow rate exceeds the capacity of the river channel. Floods represent the deadliest natural hazard in Europe, resulting in loss of life, damage to buildings, homes, business and structures such as bridges and roads. Since such consequences ar...

Rapid-response flood mapping during Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria by the Global Flood Partnership (GFP)

Science.gov (United States)

Cohen, S.; Alfieri, L.; Brakenridge, G. R.; Coughlan, E.; Galantowicz, J. F.; Hong, Y.; Kettner, A.; Nghiem, S. V.; Prados, A. I.; Rudari, R.; Salamon, P.; Trigg, M.; Weerts, A.

2017-12-01

The Global Flood Partnership (GFP; https://gfp.jrc.ec.europa.eu) is a multi-disciplinary group of scientists, operational agencies and flood risk managers focused on developing efficient and effective global flood management tools. Launched in 2014, its aim is to establish a partnership for global flood forecasting, monitoring and impact assessment to strengthen preparedness and response and to reduce global disaster losses. International organizations, the private sector, national authorities, universities and research agencies contribute to the GFP on a voluntary basis and benefit from a global network focused on flood risk reduction. At the onset of Hurricane Harvey, GFP was `activated' using email requests via its mailing service. Soon after, flood inundation maps, based on remote sensing analysis and modeling, were shared by different agencies, institutions, and individuals. These products were disseminated, to varying degrees of effectiveness, to federal, state and local agencies via emails and data-sharing services. This generated a broad data-sharing network which was utilized at the early stages of Hurricane Irma's impact, just two weeks after Harvey. In this presentation, we will describe the extent and chronology of the GFP response to both Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. We will assess the potential usefulness of this effort for event managers in various types of organizations and discuss future improvements to be implemented.

Floods and droughts: friends or foes?

Science.gov (United States)

Prudhomme, Christel

2017-04-01

Water hazards are some of the biggest threats to lives and livelihoods globally, causing serious damages to society and infrastructure. But floods and droughts are an essential part of the hydrological regime that ensures fundamental ecosystem functions, providing natural ways to bring in nutrients, flush out pollutants and enabling soils, rivers and lakes natural biodiversity to thrive. Traditionally, floods and droughts are too often considered separately, with scientific advance in process understanding, modelling, statistical characterisation and impact assessment are often done independently, possibly delaying the development of innovative methods that could be applied to both. This talk will review some of the key characteristics of floods and droughts, highlighting differences and commonalties, losses and benefits, with the aim of identifying future key research challenges faced by both current and next generation of hydrologists.

Early Warning System of Flood Disaster Based on Ultrasonic Sensors and Wireless Technology

Science.gov (United States)

Indrasari, W.; Iswanto, B. H.; Andayani, M.

2018-04-01

A flood disaster provides considerable losses to the people who live around the river. To mitigate losses of material due to flood disaster required an early warning system of flood disaster. For that reason, it necessary to design a system that provide alert to the people prior the flood disaster. And this paper describes development of a device for early detection system of flood disasters. This device consists of two ultrasonic sensors as a water level detector, and a water flow sensor as a water flow velocity sensor. The wireless technology and GSM is used as an information medium. The system is designed based on water level conditions in the Katulampa Dam, Bogor. Characterization of water level detector showed that the device effectively works in a range of water level of 14-250 cm, with a maximum relative error of 4.3%. Meanwhile the wireless works properly as far as 75 m, and the SMS transmission time is 8.20 second.

Long-lasting floods buffer the thermal regime of the Pampas

Science.gov (United States)

Houspanossian, Javier; Kuppel, Sylvain; Nosetto, Marcelo; Di Bella, Carlos; Oricchio, Patricio; Barrucand, Mariana; Rusticucci, Matilde; Jobbágy, Esteban

2018-01-01

The presence of large water masses influences the thermal regime of nearby land shaping the local climate of coastal areas by the ocean or large continental lakes. Large surface water bodies have an ephemeral nature in the vast sedimentary plains of the Pampas (Argentina) where non-flooded periods alternate with flooding cycles covering up to one third of the landscape for several months. Based on temperature records from 17 sites located 1 to 700 km away from the Atlantic coast and MODIS land surface temperature data, we explore the effects of floods on diurnal and seasonal thermal ranges as well as temperature extremes. In non-flooded periods, there is a linear increase of mean diurnal thermal range (DTR) from the coast towards the interior of the region (DTR increasing from 10 to 16 K, 0.79 K/100 km, r 2 = 0.81). This relationship weakens during flood episodes when the DTR of flood-prone inland locations shows a decline of 2 to 4 K, depending on surface water coverage in the surrounding area. DTR even approaches typical coastal values 500 km away from the ocean in the most flooded location that we studied during the three flooding cycles recorded in the study period. Frosts-free periods, a key driver of the phenology of both natural and cultivated ecosystems, are extended by up to 55 days during floods, most likely as a result of enhanced ground heat storage across the landscape ( 2.7 fold change in day-night heat transfer) combined with other effects on the surface energy balance such as greater night evaporation rates. The reduced thermal range and longer frost-free periods affect plant growth development and may offer an opportunity for longer crop growing periods, which may not only contribute to partially compensating for regional production losses caused by floods, but also open avenues for flood mitigation through higher plant evapotranspirative water losses.

Cascading impacts of anthropogenically driven habitat loss: deforestation, flooding, and possible lead poisoning in howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra).

Science.gov (United States)

Serio-Silva, Juan Carlos; Olguín, Eugenia J; Garcia-Feria, Luis; Tapia-Fierro, Karla; Chapman, Colin A

2015-01-01

To construct informed conservation plans, researchers must go beyond understanding readily apparent threats such as habitat loss and bush-meat hunting. They must predict subtle and cascading effects of anthropogenic environmental modifications. This study considered a potential cascading effect of deforestation on the howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) of Balancán, Mexico. Deforestation intensifies flooding. Thus, we predicted that increased flooding of the Usumacinta River, which creates large bodies of water that slowly evaporate, would produce increased lead content in the soils and plants, resulting in lead exposure in the howler monkeys. The average lead levels were 18.18 ± 6.76 ppm in the soils and 5.85 ± 4.37 ppm in the plants. However, the average lead content of the hair of 13 captured howler monkeys was 24.12 ± 5.84 ppm. The lead levels in the animals were correlated with 2 of 15 blood traits (lactate dehydrogenase and total bilirubin) previously documented to be associated with exposure to lead. Our research illustrates the urgent need to set reference values indicating when adverse impacts of high environmental lead levels occur, whether anthropogenic or natural, and the need to evaluate possible cascading effects of deforestation on primates.

Hydrological and hydraulic models for determination of flood-prone and flood inundation areas

Science.gov (United States)

Aksoy, Hafzullah; Sadan Ozgur Kirca, Veysel; Burgan, Halil Ibrahim; Kellecioglu, Dorukhan

2016-05-01

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in most studies on water resources. Especially, when the topography and geomorphology of study area are considered, GIS can ease the work load. Detailed data should be used in this kind of studies. Because of, either the complication of the models or the requirement of highly detailed data, model outputs can be obtained fast only with a good optimization. The aim in this study, firstly, is to determine flood-prone areas in a watershed by using a hydrological model considering two wetness indexes; the topographical wetness index, and the SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses) wetness index. The wetness indexes were obtained in the Quantum GIS (QGIS) software by using the Digital Elevation Model of the study area. Flood-prone areas are determined by considering the wetness index maps of the watershed. As the second stage of this study, a hydraulic model, HEC-RAS, was executed to determine flood inundation areas under different return period-flood events. River network cross-sections required for this study were derived from highly detailed digital elevation models by QGIS. Also river hydraulic parameters were used in the hydraulic model. Modelling technology used in this study is made of freely available open source softwares. Based on case studies performed on watersheds in Turkey, it is concluded that results of such studies can be used for taking precaution measures against life and monetary losses due to floods in urban areas particularly.

Hydrological and hydraulic models for determination of flood-prone and flood inundation areas

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

H. Aksoy

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Geographic Information Systems (GIS are widely used in most studies on water resources. Especially, when the topography and geomorphology of study area are considered, GIS can ease the work load. Detailed data should be used in this kind of studies. Because of, either the complication of the models or the requirement of highly detailed data, model outputs can be obtained fast only with a good optimization. The aim in this study, firstly, is to determine flood-prone areas in a watershed by using a hydrological model considering two wetness indexes; the topographical wetness index, and the SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses wetness index. The wetness indexes were obtained in the Quantum GIS (QGIS software by using the Digital Elevation Model of the study area. Flood-prone areas are determined by considering the wetness index maps of the watershed. As the second stage of this study, a hydraulic model, HEC-RAS, was executed to determine flood inundation areas under different return period-flood events. River network cross-sections required for this study were derived from highly detailed digital elevation models by QGIS. Also river hydraulic parameters were used in the hydraulic model. Modelling technology used in this study is made of freely available open source softwares. Based on case studies performed on watersheds in Turkey, it is concluded that results of such studies can be used for taking precaution measures against life and monetary losses due to floods in urban areas particularly.

Flood Hazard and Risk Analysis in Urban Area

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Chen-Jia; Hsu, Ming-hsi; Teng, Wei-Hsien; Lin, Tsung-Hsien

2017-04-01

Typhoons always induce heavy rainfall during summer and autumn seasons in Taiwan. Extreme weather in recent years often causes severe flooding which result in serious losses of life and property. With the rapid industrial and commercial development, people care about not only the quality of life, but also the safety of life and property. So the impact of life and property due to disaster is the most serious problem concerned by the residents. For the mitigation of the disaster impact, the flood hazard and risk analysis play an important role for the disaster prevention and mitigation. In this study, the vulnerability of Kaohsiung city was evaluated by statistics of social development factor. The hazard factors of Kaohsiung city was calculated by simulated flood depth of six different return periods and four typhoon events which result in serious flooding in Kaohsiung city. The flood risk can be obtained by means of the flood hazard and social vulnerability. The analysis results provide authority to strengthen disaster preparedness and to set up more resources in high risk areas.

Identification of flood-rich and flood-poor periods in flood series

Science.gov (United States)

Mediero, Luis; Santillán, David; Garrote, Luis

2015-04-01

Recently, a general concern about non-stationarity of flood series has arisen, as changes in catchment response can be driven by several factors, such as climatic and land-use changes. Several studies to detect trends in flood series at either national or trans-national scales have been conducted. Trends are usually detected by the Mann-Kendall test. However, the results of this test depend on the starting and ending year of the series, which can lead to different results in terms of the period considered. The results can be conditioned to flood-poor and flood-rich periods located at the beginning or end of the series. A methodology to identify statistically significant flood-rich and flood-poor periods is developed, based on the comparison between the expected sampling variability of floods when stationarity is assumed and the observed variability of floods in a given series. The methodology is applied to a set of long series of annual maximum floods, peaks over threshold and counts of annual occurrences in peaks over threshold series observed in Spain in the period 1942-2009. Mediero et al. (2014) found a general decreasing trend in flood series in some parts of Spain that could be caused by a flood-rich period observed in 1950-1970, placed at the beginning of the flood series. The results of this study support the findings of Mediero et al. (2014), as a flood-rich period in 1950-1970 was identified in most of the selected sites. References: Mediero, L., Santillán, D., Garrote, L., Granados, A. Detection and attribution of trends in magnitude, frequency and timing of floods in Spain, Journal of Hydrology, 517, 1072-1088, 2014.

A Nonword Repetition Task for Speakers with Misarticulations: The Syllable Repetition Task (SRT)

Science.gov (United States)

Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Lohmeier, Heather L.; Campbell, Thomas F.; Dollaghan, Christine A.; Green, Jordan R.; Moore, Christopher A.

2009-01-01

Purpose: Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) word repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. In this article, the authors (a) describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetition Task…

The use of a flood index to characterise flooding in the north-eastern region of Bangladesh

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Bhattacharya B.

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Flooding in the Haor region in the north-east of Bangladesh is presented in this paper. A haor is a saucershaped depression, which is used during the dry period (Dec to mid-May for agriculture and as a fishery during the wet period (Jun-Nov. Pre-monsoon flooding till mid-May causes agricultural loss. The area is bordering India, and is fed by some flashy Indian catchments. The area is drained mainly by the Surma-Kushiyara river system. The terrain generally is flat and the flashy characteristics die out within a short distance from the border. Limited studies on the region, particularly with the help of numerical models, have been carried out in the past. Therefore, an objective of the current research was to set up numerical models capable of reasonably emulating the physical system. Such models could, for example, associate different gauges to the spatio-temporal variation of hydrodynamic variables and help in carrying out a systemic study on the flood propagation. A 1D2D model, with one-dimensional model for the rivers (based on MIKE 11 from DHI and a two-dimensional model for the haors (based on MIKE 21 from DHI were developed. In order to characterize flooding in the large area a flood index is proposed, which is computed based on the hydrograph characteristics such as the rising curve gradient, flood magnitude ratio and time to peak. The index was used in characterising flooding in the Haor region. In general, two groups of rivers were identified. The study enabled identifying the hot-spots in the study area with risks from flooding.

Natural Disaster Induced Losses at Household Level: A Study on the Disaster Affected Migrants

Science.gov (United States)

Ishtiaque, A.; Nazem, N. I.; Jerin, T.

2015-12-01

Given its geographical location Bangladesh frequently confronts natural disasters. Disaster induced losses often obligate socio-economic dislocation from rural areas to large urban centers. After incurring what type/amount of losses people migrate is still unknown. In this paper we focus on migrants who migrated due to natural disasters. Thus, the objectives of this paper are, first, ascertaining the proportion of disaster migrants in Dhaka city; second, determining types of natural disasters which compel rural out-migration; third, assessing the resource and economic losses stem from these disasters at household level. Using the slum database (N = 4966), we select eight slums randomly with a purpose to include migrants from maximum districts available. In order to identify the proportion of disaster affected migrants a census is conducted in 407 households of those 8 slums and the result demonstrates that 18.43% of the migrants are disaster affected, which was only 5% in 1993. Out of all hydro-meteorological disasters, river bank erosion (RBE), followed by flood, drives most people out of their abode. However, unlike RBE migrants, migrants affected by flood usually return to their origin after certain period. In-depth interviews on the disaster migrants reveal that RBE claims total loss of homestead land & agricultural land while flood causes 20% and 23% loss respectively. Agricultural income decreases 96% because of RBE whereas flood victims encounter 98% decrease. People also incur 79% & 69% loss in livestock owing to RBE and flood severally. These disasters cause more than eighty percent reduction in total monthly income. Albeit RBE appears more vigorous but total economic loss is greater in flood- on average each household experiences a loss of BDT 350,555 due to flood and BDT 300,000 on account of RBE. Receiving no substantial support from community or government the affected people are compelled to migrate.

Pan-European stochastic flood event set

Science.gov (United States)

Kadlec, Martin; Pinto, Joaquim G.; He, Yi; Punčochář, Petr; Kelemen, Fanni D.; Manful, Desmond; Palán, Ladislav

2017-04-01

Impact Forecasting (IF), the model development center of Aon Benfield, has been developing a large suite of catastrophe flood models on probabilistic bases for individual countries in Europe. Such natural catastrophes do not follow national boundaries: for example, the major flood in 2016 was responsible for the Europe's largest insured loss of USD3.4bn and affected Germany, France, Belgium, Austria and parts of several other countries. Reflecting such needs, IF initiated a pan-European flood event set development which combines cross-country exposures with country based loss distributions to provide more insightful data to re/insurers. Because the observed discharge data are not available across the whole Europe in sufficient quantity and quality to permit a detailed loss evaluation purposes, a top-down approach was chosen. This approach is based on simulating precipitation from a GCM/RCM model chain followed by a calculation of discharges using rainfall-runoff modelling. IF set up this project in a close collaboration with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) regarding the precipitation estimates and with University of East Anglia (UEA) in terms of the rainfall-runoff modelling. KIT's main objective is to provide high resolution daily historical and stochastic time series of key meteorological variables. A purely dynamical downscaling approach with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM) is used to generate the historical time series, using re-analysis data as boundary conditions. The resulting time series are validated against the gridded observational dataset E-OBS, and different bias-correction methods are employed. The generation of the stochastic time series requires transfer functions between large-scale atmospheric variables and regional temperature and precipitation fields. These transfer functions are developed for the historical time series using reanalysis data as predictors and bias-corrected CCLM simulated precipitation and temperature as

The Generation of a Stochastic Flood Event Catalogue for Continental USA

Science.gov (United States)

Quinn, N.; Wing, O.; Smith, A.; Sampson, C. C.; Neal, J. C.; Bates, P. D.

2017-12-01

Recent advances in the acquisition of spatiotemporal environmental data and improvements in computational capabilities has enabled the generation of large scale, even global, flood hazard layers which serve as a critical decision-making tool for a range of end users. However, these datasets are designed to indicate only the probability and depth of inundation at a given location and are unable to describe the likelihood of concurrent flooding across multiple sites.Recent research has highlighted that although the estimation of large, widespread flood events is of great value to flood mitigation and insurance industries, to date it has been difficult to deal with this spatial dependence structure in flood risk over relatively large scales. Many existing approaches have been restricted to empirical estimates of risk based on historic events, limiting their capability of assessing risk over the full range of plausible scenarios. Therefore, this research utilises a recently developed model-based approach to describe the multisite joint distribution of extreme river flows across continental USA river gauges. Given an extreme event at a site, the model characterises the likelihood neighbouring sites are also impacted. This information is used to simulate an ensemble of plausible synthetic extreme event footprints from which flood depths are extracted from an existing global flood hazard catalogue. Expected economic losses are then estimated by overlaying flood depths with national datasets defining asset locations, characteristics and depth damage functions. The ability of this approach to quantify probabilistic economic risk and rare threshold exceeding events is expected to be of value to those interested in the flood mitigation and insurance sectors.This work describes the methodological steps taken to create the flood loss catalogue over a national scale; highlights the uncertainty in the expected annual economic vulnerability within the USA from extreme river flows

iFLOOD: A Real Time Flood Forecast System for Total Water Modeling in the National Capital Region

Science.gov (United States)

Sumi, S. J.; Ferreira, C.

2017-12-01

Extreme flood events are the costliest natural hazards impacting the US and frequently cause extensive damages to infrastructure, disruption to economy and loss of lives. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew brought severe damage to South Carolina and demonstrated the importance of accurate flood hazard predictions that requires the integration of riverine and coastal model forecasts for total water prediction in coastal and tidal areas. The National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Ocean Service (NOS) provide flood forecasts for almost the entire US, still there are service-gap areas in tidal regions where no official flood forecast is available. The National capital region is vulnerable to multi-flood hazards including high flows from annual inland precipitation events and surge driven coastal inundation along the tidal Potomac River. Predicting flood levels on such tidal areas in river-estuarine zone is extremely challenging. The main objective of this study is to develop the next generation of flood forecast systems capable of providing accurate and timely information to support emergency management and response in areas impacted by multi-flood hazards. This forecast system is capable of simulating flood levels in the Potomac and Anacostia River incorporating the effects of riverine flooding from the upstream basins, urban storm water and tidal oscillations from the Chesapeake Bay. Flood forecast models developed so far have been using riverine data to simulate water levels for Potomac River. Therefore, the idea is to use forecasted storm surge data from a coastal model as boundary condition of this system. Final output of this validated model will capture the water behavior in river-estuary transition zone far better than the one with riverine data only. The challenge for this iFLOOD forecast system is to understand the complex dynamics of multi-flood hazards caused by storm surges, riverine flow, tidal oscillation and urban storm water. Automated system

Response of Vegetation on Gravel Bars to Management Measures and Floods: Case Study From the Czech Republic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eremiášová Renata

2014-08-01

Full Text Available This article investigates response of vegetation on gravel bars to management measures and floods. The management measures consisted of the partial removal of gravel and vegetation cover, and were applied to six gravel bars on the Ostravice River, Czech Republic. Unexpected floods occu-rred in 2010, with the amplitude of 5- to 50-year repetition. Research of vegetation on the gravel bars consisted of vegetation survey before the management works; the monitoring of vegetation development over the following year and the verification of the relationships of species diversity, successional stages and the biotope conditions with the help of multivariate analysis (detrended correspondence analysis. Vegetation on the gravel bars was at different successional stages, and had higher diversity and vegetation cover before the management measures and floods. The mul-tivariate analysis revealed a shift toward initial successional stages with high demand on moisture, temperature and light after both management measures and floods.

Impact of modelling scale on probabilistic flood risk assessment: the Malawi case

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Rudari Roberto

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In the early months of 2015, destructive floods hit Malawi, causing deaths and economic losses. Flood risk assessment outcomes can be used to increase scientific-supported awareness of risk. The recent increase in availability of high resolution data such as TanDEM-X at 12m resolution makes possible the use of detailed physical based flood hazard models in risk assessment. Nonetheless the scale of hazard modelling still remains an issue, which requires a compromise between level of detail and computational efforts. This work presents two different approaches on hazard modelling. Both methods rely on 32-years of numeric weather re-analysis and rainfall-runoff transformation through a fully distributed WFLOW-type hydrological model. The first method, applied at national scale, uses fast post-processing routines, which estimate flood water depth at a resolution of about 1×1km. The second method applies a full 2D hydraulic model to propagate water discharge into the flood plains and best suites for small areas where assets are concentrated. At the 12m resolution, three hot spots with a model area of approximately 10×10 km are analysed. Flood hazard maps obtained with both approaches are combined with flood impact models at the same resolution to generate indicators for flood risk. A quantitative comparison of the two approaches is presented in order to show the effects of modelling scale on both hazard and impact losses.

Flood susceptibility mapping using novel ensembles of adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system and metaheuristic algorithms

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Razavi Termeh, Seyed Vahid; Kornejady, Aiding; Pourghasemi, Hamid Reza; Keesstra, Saskia

2018-01-01

Flood is one of the most destructive natural disasters which cause great financial and life losses per year. Therefore, producing susceptibility maps for flood management are necessary in order to reduce its harmful effects. The aim of the present study is to map flood hazard over the Jahrom

Climate Change Impacts on pricing Long-Term Flood Insurance: A Comprehensive Study for the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aerts, J.C.J.H.; Botzen, W.J.W.

2011-01-01

Recently long-term flood insurance contracts with a duration of 5, 10 or 15 years have been proposed as a solution for covering flood risk and mitigating increasing flood losses. Establishing a long-term relation between the policyholder and the insurer can provide better incentives to reduce risk

Flood mapping with multitemporal MODIS data

Science.gov (United States)

Son, Nguyen-Thanh; Chen, Chi-Farn; Chen, Cheng-Ru

2014-05-01

Flood is one of the most devastating and frequent disasters resulting in loss of human life and serve damage to infrastructure and agricultural production. Flood is phenomenal in the Mekong River Delta (MRD), Vietnam. It annually lasts from July to November. Information on spatiotemporal flood dynamics is thus important for planners to devise successful strategies for flood monitoring and mitigation of its negative effects. The main objective of this study is to develop an approach for weekly mapping flood dynamics with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer data in MRD using the water fraction model (WFM). The data processed for 2009 comprises three main steps: (1) data pre-processing to construct smooth time series of the difference in the values (DVLE) between land surface water index (LSWI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) using the empirical mode decomposition (EMD), (2) flood derivation using WFM, and (3) accuracy assessment. The mapping results were compared with the ground reference data, which were constructed from Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data. As several error sources, including mixed-pixel problems and low-resolution bias between the mapping results and ground reference data, could lower the level of classification accuracy, the comparisons indicated satisfactory results with the overall accuracy of 80.5% and Kappa coefficient of 0.61, respectively. These results were reaffirmed by a close correlation between the MODIS-derived flood area and that of the ground reference map at the provincial level, with the correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.93. Considering the importance of remote sensing for monitoring floods and mitigating the damage caused by floods to crops and infrastructure, this study eventually leads to the realization of the value of using time-series MODIS DVLE data for weekly flood monitoring in MRD with the aid of EMD and WFM. Such an approach that could provide quantitative information on

Cyber Surveillance for Flood Disasters

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Shi-Wei Lo

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Regional heavy rainfall is usually caused by the influence of extreme weather conditions. Instant heavy rainfall often results in the flooding of rivers and the neighboring low-lying areas, which is responsible for a large number of casualties and considerable property loss. The existing precipitation forecast systems mostly focus on the analysis and forecast of large-scale areas but do not provide precise instant automatic monitoring and alert feedback for individual river areas and sections. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an easy method to automatically monitor the flood object of a specific area, based on the currently widely used remote cyber surveillance systems and image processing methods, in order to obtain instant flooding and waterlogging event feedback. The intrusion detection mode of these surveillance systems is used in this study, wherein a flood is considered a possible invasion object. Through the detection and verification of flood objects, automatic flood risk-level monitoring of specific individual river segments, as well as the automatic urban inundation detection, has become possible. The proposed method can better meet the practical needs of disaster prevention than the method of large-area forecasting. It also has several other advantages, such as flexibility in location selection, no requirement of a standard water-level ruler, and a relatively large field of view, when compared with the traditional water-level measurements using video screens. The results can offer prompt reference for appropriate disaster warning actions in small areas, making them more accurate and effective.

Flood Risk Assessment Based On Security Deficit Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Beck, J.; Metzger, R.; Hingray, B.; Musy, A.

Risk is a human perception: a given risk may be considered as acceptable or unac- ceptable depending on the group that has to face that risk. Flood risk analysis of- ten estimates economic losses from damages, but neglects the question of accept- able/unacceptable risk. With input from land use managers, politicians and other stakeholders, risk assessment based on security deficit analysis determines objects with unacceptable risk and their degree of security deficit. Such a risk assessment methodology, initially developed by the Swiss federal authorities, is illustrated by its application on a reach of the Alzette River (Luxembourg) in the framework of the IRMA-SPONGE FRHYMAP project. Flood risk assessment always involves a flood hazard analysis, an exposed object vulnerability analysis, and an analysis combing the results of these two previous analyses. The flood hazard analysis was done with the quasi-2D hydraulic model FldPln to produce flood intensity maps. Flood intensity was determined by the water height and velocity. Object data for the vulnerability analysis, provided by the Luxembourg government, were classified according to their potential damage. Potential damage is expressed in terms of direct, human life and secondary losses. A thematic map was produced to show the object classification. Protection goals were then attributed to the object classes. Protection goals are assigned in terms of an acceptable flood intensity for a certain flood frequency. This is where input from land use managers and politicians comes into play. The perception of risk in the re- gion or country influences the protection goal assignment. Protection goals as used in Switzerland were used in this project. Thematic maps showing the protection goals of each object in the case study area for a given flood frequency were produced. Com- parison between an object's protection goal and the intensity of the flood that touched the object determine the acceptability of the risk and the

A new approach for river flood extent delineation in rural and urban areas combining RADARSAT-2 imagery and flood recurrence interval data

Science.gov (United States)

Tanguy, Marion; Bernier, Monique; Chokmani, Karem

2015-04-01

When a flood hits an inhabited area, managers and services responsible for public safety need precise, reliable and up to date maps of the areas affected by the flood, in order to quickly roll out and to coordinate the adequate intervention and assistance plans required to limit the human and material damages caused by the disaster. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors are now considered as one of the most adapted tool for flood detection and mapping in a context of crisis management. Indeed, due to their capacity to acquire data night and day, in almost all meteorological conditions, SAR sensors allow the acquisition of synoptic but detailed views of the areas affected by the flood, even during the active phases of the event. Moreover, new generation sensors such as RADARSAT-2, TerraSAR-X, COSMO-SkyMed, are providing very high resolution images of the disaster (down to 1m ground resolution). Further, critical improvements have been made on the temporal repetitivity of acquisitions and on data availability, through the development of satellite constellations (i.e the four COSMO-Skymed or the Sentinel-1A and 1B satellites) and thanks to the implementation of the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters", which guarantees high priority images acquisition and delivery with 4 to 12 hours. If detection of open water flooded areas is relatively straightforward with SAR imagery, flood detection in built-up areas is often associated with important issues. Indeed, because of the side looking geometry of the SAR sensors, structures such as tall vegetation and structures parallel to the satellite direction of travel may produce shadow and layover effects, leading to important over and under-detections of flooded pixels. Besides, the numerous permanent water-surfaces like radar response areas present in built-up environments, such as parking lots, roads etc., may be mixed up with flooded areas, resulting in substantial inaccuracies in the final flood map. In spite of

Monitoring and Mapping the Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Houston, Texas.

Science.gov (United States)

Balaji Bhaskar, M. S.

2017-12-01

Monitoring and Mapping the Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Houston, Texas.Urban flooding is a hazard that causes major destruction and loss of life. High intense precipitation events have increased significantly in Houston, Texas in recent years resulting in frequent river and bayou flooding. Many of the historical storm events such as Allison, Rita and Ike have caused several billion dollars in losses for the Houston-Galveston Region. A category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall on South Texas resulting in heavy precipitation from Aug 25 to 29 of 2017. About 1 trillion gallons of water fell across Harris County over a 4-day period. This amount of water covers Harris County's 1,800 square miles with an average of 33 inches of water. The long rain event resulted in an average 40inch rainfall across the area in several rain gauges and the maximum rainfall of 49.6 inches was recorded near Clear Creek. The objectives of our study are to 1) Process the Geographic Information System (GIS) and satellite data from the pre and post Hurricane Harvey event in Houston, Texas and 2) Analyze the satellite imagery to map the nature and pattern of the flooding in Houston-Galveston Region. The GIS data of the study area was downloaded and processed from the various publicly available resources such as Houston Galveston Area Council (HGAC), Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Texas Natural Resource Information Systems (TNRIS). The satellite data collected soon after the Harvey flooding event were downloaded and processed using the ERDAS image processing software. The flood plain areas surrounding the Brazos River, Buffalo Bayou and the Addicks Barker reservoirs showed severe inundation. The different watershed areas affected by the catastrophic flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey were mapped and compared with the pre flooding event.

High-Frequency Repetitive Sensory Stimulation as Intervention to Improve Sensory Loss in Patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome I.

Science.gov (United States)

David, Marianne; Dinse, Hubert R; Mainka, Tina; Tegenthoff, Martin; Maier, Christoph

2015-01-01

Achieving perceptual gains in healthy individuals or facilitating rehabilitation in patients is generally considered to require intense training to engage neuronal plasticity mechanisms. Recent work, however, suggested that beneficial outcome similar to training can be effectively acquired by a complementary approach in which the learning occurs in response to mere exposure to repetitive sensory stimulation (rSS). For example, high-frequency repetitive sensory stimulation (HF-rSS) enhances tactile performance and induces cortical reorganization in healthy subjects and patients after stroke. Patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) show impaired tactile performance associated with shrinkage of cortical maps. We here investigated the feasibility and efficacy of HF-rSS, and low-frequency rSS (LF-rSS) to enhance tactile performance and reduce pain intensity in 20 patients with CRPS type I. Intermittent high- or low-frequency electrical stimuli were applied for 45 min/day to all fingertips of the affected hand for 5 days. Main outcome measures were spatial two-point-discrimination thresholds and mechanical detection thresholds measured on the tip of the index finger bilaterally. Secondary endpoint was current pain intensity. All measures were assessed before and on day 5 after the last stimulation session. HF-rSS applied in 16 patients improved tactile discrimination on the affected hand significantly without changes contralaterally. Current pain intensity remained unchanged on average, but decreased in four patients by ≥30%. This limited pain relief might be due to the short stimulation period of 5 days only. In contrast, after LF-rSS, tactile discrimination was impaired in all four patients, while detection thresholds and pain were not affected. Our data suggest that HF-rSS could be used as a novel approach in CRPS treatment to improve sensory loss. Longer treatment periods might be required to induce consistent pain relief.

Flood Disaster Risk Assessment of Rural Housings — A Case Study of Kouqian Town in China

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Qi Zhang

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Floods are a devastating kind of natural disaster. About half of the population in China lives in rural areas. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the flood disaster risk of rural housings. The results are valuable for guiding the rescue and relief goods layout. In this study, we take the severe flood disaster that happened at Kouqian Town in Jilin, China in 2010 as an example to build an risk assessment system for flood disaster on rural housings. Based on the theory of natural disaster risk formation and “3S” technology (remote sensing, geography information systems and global positioning systems, taking the rural housing as the bearing body, we assess the flood disaster risk from three aspects: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The hazard presented as the flood submerging range and depth. The exposure presented as the values of the housing and the property in it. The vulnerability presented as the relationship between the losses caused by flood and flood depth. We validate the model by the field survey after the flood disaster. The risk assessment results highly coincide with the field survey losses. This model can be used to assess the risk of other flood events in this area.

Flood Disaster Risk Assessment of Rural Housings — A Case Study of Kouqian Town in China

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Qi; Zhang, Jiquan; Jiang, Liupeng; Liu, Xingpeng; Tong, Zhijun

2014-01-01

Floods are a devastating kind of natural disaster. About half of the population in China lives in rural areas. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the flood disaster risk of rural housings. The results are valuable for guiding the rescue and relief goods layout. In this study, we take the severe flood disaster that happened at Kouqian Town in Jilin, China in 2010 as an example to build an risk assessment system for flood disaster on rural housings. Based on the theory of natural disaster risk formation and “3S” technology (remote sensing, geography information systems and global positioning systems), taking the rural housing as the bearing body, we assess the flood disaster risk from three aspects: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The hazard presented as the flood submerging range and depth. The exposure presented as the values of the housing and the property in it. The vulnerability presented as the relationship between the losses caused by flood and flood depth. We validate the model by the field survey after the flood disaster. The risk assessment results highly coincide with the field survey losses. This model can be used to assess the risk of other flood events in this area. PMID:24705363

Linking rural community livelihoods to resilience building in flood risk reduction in Zimbabwe

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patrick Gwimbi

2009-04-01

Full Text Available The increasing occurrence of disastrous flooding events and the mounting losses in both life and property values in Zimbabwe have drawn attention to the flooding situation in the country, especially the rural areas. This article explores the resilience of vulnerable rural communities to flood risks associated within increasingly frequent and severe events linked to climate change. Starting by reviewing the current literature on rural livelihoods, resilience and vulnerability research, the paper argues for a coordinated teamwork approach in flood risk mitigation in rural areas. The paper concludes with several recommendations for enhanced resilience to flood hazards.

26 CFR 1.165-6 - Farming losses.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

...) Loss of prospective crop. The total loss by frost, storm, flood, or fire of a prospective crop being... by disease, exposure, or injury of any livestock purchased and used in the trade or business of...

Long-term changes in community assembly, resistance, and resilience following experimental floods.

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, Christopher T

2012-10-01

This study examined the long-term changes in community assembly, resistance, and resilience of macroinvertebrates following 10 years of experimental floods in a flow regulated river. Physico-chemistry, macroinvertebrates, and periphyton biomass were monitored before and sequentially after each of 22 floods, and drift/seston was collected during six separate floods over the study period. The floods reduced the density and taxon richness of macroinvertebrates, and a nonmetric dimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis distinguished temporal shifts in community assembly. Resistance (measured as the relative lack of loss in density) tofloods varied among taxa, and the abundance of resistant taxa was related to the temporal changes in community assembly. Community resistance was inversely related to flood magnitude with all larger floods (> 25 m3/s, > 16-fold over baseflow) reducing densities by > 75% regardless of flood year, whereas smaller floods (floods. No relationship was found between flood magnitude and the relative loss in periphyton biomass. Resilience was defined as the recovery slope (positive slope of a parameter with time following each flood) and was unrelated to shifts in community assembly or resistance. Macroinvertebrate drift and seston demonstrated hysteresis (i.e., a temporal response in parameter quantity with change in discharge) during each flood, although larger floods typically had two peaks in both parameters. The first peak was a response to the initial increases in flow, whereas the second peak was associated with streambed disturbance (substrate mobility) and side-slope failure causing increased scour. Drift density was 3-9 times greater and that of seston 3-30 times greater during larger floods than smaller floods. These results demonstrate temporal shifts in macroinvertebrate community assembly toward a pre-dam assemblage following sequential floods in this flow regulated river, thus confirming the ecological role of habitat filtering in

Damaging Rainfall and Flooding. The Other Sahel Hazards

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tarhule, A. [Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd Street, Norman, OK, 73079 (United States)

2005-10-01

Damaging rainfall and rain-induced flooding occur from time to time in the drought-prone Sahel savannah zone of Niger in West Africa but official records of these events and their socioeconomic impacts do not exist. This paper utilized newspaper accounts between 1970 and 2000 to survey and illustrate the range of these flood hazards in the Sahel. During the study interval, 53 newspaper articles reported 79 damaging rainfall and flood events in 47 different communities in the Sahel of Niger. Collectively, these events destroyed 5,580 houses and rendered 27,289 people homeless. Cash losses and damage to infrastructure in only three events exceeded $4 million. Sahel residents attribute these floods to five major causes including both natural and anthropogenic, but they view the flood problem as driven primarily by land use patterns. Despite such awareness, traditional coping strategies appear inadequate for dealing with the problems in part because of significant climatic variability. Analysis of several rainfall measures indicates that the cumulative rainfall in the days prior to a heavy rain event is an important factor influencing whether or not heavy rainfall results in flooding. Thus, despite some limitations, newspaper accounts of historical flooding are largely consistent with measured climatic variables. The study demonstrates that concerted effort is needed to improve the status of knowledge concerning flood impacts and indeed other natural and human hazards in the Sahel.

Loss of life estimation-Review, developments and challenges

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jonkman, S.N.; Maaskant, B.; Kolen, B.; Needham, J. T Jason

2016-01-01

This paper presents an overview and review of methods developed for loss of life estimation in flood risk assessment. These methods range from empirical to simulation based approaches that are used to support flood risk analyses and emergency management. Similarities and differences between the

A free and open source QGIS plugin for flood risk analysis: FloodRisk

Science.gov (United States)

Albano, Raffaele; Sole, Aurelia; Mancusi, Leonardo

2016-04-01

information and to generate knowledge in the stakeholders for improving flood risk management. In particular, Floodrisk comprises a set of calculators capable of computing human or economic losses for a collection of assets, caused by a given scenario event, explicitly covering mitigation and adaptation measures (Mancusi et al., 2015). It is important to mention that despite the fact that some literature models incorporates calculator philosophies identical to the ones implemented in the FloodRisk engine, its implementation might vary significantly, such as the need for a user-friendly and intuitive user interface, or the capability of running the calculations on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), the ability to promotes extensibility, efficient testability, and scientific operability. FloodRisk has been designed as an initiative for implemented a standard and harmonized procedure to determine the flood impacts. Albano, R.; Mancusi, L.; Sole, A.; Adamowski, J. Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable EU Flood Risk Management: FOSS and Geospatial Tools - Challenges and Opportunities for Operative Risk Analysis. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2015, 4, 2704-2727. Mancusi, L., Albano, R., Sole, A.. FloodRisk: a QGIS plugin for flood consequences estimation, In: Geomatics Workbooks n°12 - FOSS4G Europe Como, 2015

Flooding of a large, passive, pressure-tube LWR

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hejzlar, P.; Todreas, N.E.; Driscoll, M.J. [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)

1995-09-01

A reactor concept has been developed which can survive LOCA without scram and without replenishing primary coolant inventory. The proposed concept is a pressure tube type reactor similar to CANDU reactors, but differing in three key aspects: (1) a solid SiC-coated graphite fuel matrix is used in place of fuel pin bundles, (2) the heavy water coolant in the pressure tubes is replaced by light water, and (3) the calandria tank contains a low pressure gas instead of heavy water moderator. The gas displaces the light water from the calandria during normal operation, while during loss of coolant or loss of heat sink accidents, it allows passive calandria flooding. This paper describes the thermal hydraulic characteristics of the gravity driven calandria flooding process. Flooding the calandria space with light water is a unique and very important feature of the proposed pressure-tube LWR concept. The flooding of the top row of fuel channels must be accomplished fast enough so that none of the critical components of the fuel channel exceed their design limits. The flooding process has been modeled and shown to be rapid enough to maintain all components within their design limits. Two other considerations are important. The thermal shock experienced by the calandria and pressure tubes has been evaluated and shown to be within acceptable bounds. Finally, although complete flooding renders the reactor deeply subcritical, various steam/water densities can be hypothesized to be present during the flooding process which could cause reactivity to increase from the initially voided calandria case. One such hypothesis which leads to the maximum possible density of the steam/water mixture in the still unflooded calandria space is entrainment from the free surface. It is shown that the steam/water mixture density yielding the maximum reactivity peak cannot be achieved by entrainment because it exceeds thermohydraulically attainable densities of steam/water by an order of magnitude.

Socio-economic Impact Analysis for Near Real-Time Flood Detection in the Lower Mekong River Basin

Science.gov (United States)

Oddo, P.; Ahamed, A.; Bolten, J. D.

2017-12-01

Flood events pose a severe threat to communities in the Lower Mekong River Basin. The combination of population growth, urbanization, and economic development exacerbate the impacts of these flood events. Flood damage assessments are frequently used to quantify the economic losses in the wake of storms. These assessments are critical for understanding the effects of flooding on the local population, and for informing decision-makers about future risks. Remote sensing systems provide a valuable tool for monitoring flood conditions and assessing their severity more rapidly than traditional post-event evaluations. The frequency and severity of extreme flood events are projected to increase, further illustrating the need for improved flood monitoring and impact analysis. In this study we implement a socio-economic damage model into a decision support tool with near real-time flood detection capabilities (NASA's Project Mekong). Surface water extent for current and historical floods is found using multispectral Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-meter imagery and the spectral Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) signatures of permanent water bodies (MOD44W). Direct and indirect damages to populations, infrastructure, and agriculture are assessed using the 2011 Southeast Asian flood as a case study. Improved land cover and flood depth assessments result in a more refined understanding of losses throughout the Mekong River Basin. Results suggest that rapid initial estimates of flood impacts can provide valuable information to governments, international agencies, and disaster responders in the wake of extreme flood events.

Spatial Scaling of Global Rainfall and Flood Extremes

Science.gov (United States)

Devineni, Naresh; Lall, Upmanu; Xi, Chen; Ward, Philip

2014-05-01

Floods associated with severe storms are a significant source of risk for property, life and supply chains. These property losses tend to be determined as much by the duration and spatial extent of flooding as by the depth and velocity of inundation. High duration floods are typically induced by persistent rainfall (up to 30 day duration) as seen recently in Thailand, Pakistan, the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers, France, and Germany. Events related to persistent and recurrent rainfall appear to correspond to the persistence of specific global climate patterns that may be identifiable from global, historical data fields, and also from climate models that project future conditions. In this paper, we investigate the statistical properties of the spatial manifestation of the rainfall exceedances and floods. We present the first ever results on a global analysis of the scaling characteristics of extreme rainfall and flood event duration, volumes and contiguous flooded areas as a result of large scale organization of long duration rainfall events. Results are organized by latitude and with reference to the phases of ENSO, and reveal surprising invariance across latitude. Speculation as to the potential relation to the dynamical factors is presented

Opportunities for corruption across Flood Disaster Management (FDM)

Science.gov (United States)

Nordin, R. Mohd; Latip, E.; Zawawi, E. M. Ahmad; Ismail, Z.

2018-02-01

Flood is one of the major disasters in the world. Despite flood resulted in loss of life and damaged properties, it naturally imparts people to assist the victims that affected by the disaster. Malaysia has experienced many serious flooding events and proper flood disaster management need to be developed and adopted occasionally. Flood Disaster Management (FDM) seemed to be not working effectively especially during the Kelantan prodigious flood in December 2014. There were negative perceptions among victims and Malaysian citizens regarding the disaster management and government authorities in relation to corrupt practices. The FDM can be divided into four phases (i.e., prevention, preparedness, response and recovery) which undoubtedly corruption is perceived to exists in every phase. The aim of this study is to identify opportunities of corruption across FDM phases. The study presents a case study of Kelantan using the quantitative research approach which utilises questionnaire with government and private agencies. Further to that, this paper proved that opportunities for corruption may occur at every phase, undoubtedly response and recovery phase especially activities involving fund and donation are riskier. The findings are hoped to assist in developing an improved FDM in term of increased transparency.

Floods in the United States: Magnitude and frequency

Science.gov (United States)

Jarvis, Clarence S.; ,

1936-01-01

From time immemorial floods have transformed beneficent river waters into a menace to humanity. Man's progress toward economic stability has been repeatedly halted or even thrown backward by the interruption of his efforts to make effective use of rivers and of valley lands. This handicap is not imposed by the destructiveness of large rivers alone, or of rivers in widely separated areas, for there are few if any streams, brooks, or rivulets that are not subject to flows beyond their channel capacities. Yet, though man for ages has suffered seriously from recurring floods, he has not been deterred from continuing to extend his activities in areas that are virtually foredoomed to flood damage.Today in the United States serious floods may occur in any section in any year, and even, in some regions, several times a year. Many of these floods leave behind them the tragedy of death and disease and of property irreparably damaged. The aggregate direct property damage caused by floods in this country has been estimated roughly to average $35,000,000 a year. In addition there are serious indirect and intangible losses of great but not precisely calculable magnitude.

Flood damage in Italy: towards an assessment model of reconstruction costs

Science.gov (United States)

Sterlacchini, Simone; Zazzeri, Marco; Genovese, Elisabetta; Modica, Marco; Zoboli, Roberto

2016-04-01

Recent decades in Italy have seen a very rapid expansion of urbanisation in terms of physical assets, while demographics have remained stable. Both the characteristics of Italian soil and anthropic development, along with repeated global climatic stress, have made the country vulnerable to floods, the intensity of which is increasingly alarming. The combination of these trends will contribute to large financial losses due to property damage in the absence of specific mitigation strategies. The present study focuses on the province of Sondrio in Northern Italy (area of about 3,200 km²), which is home to more than 180,000 inhabitants and the population is growing slightly. It is clearly a hot spot for flood exposure, as it is primarily a mountainous area where floods and flash floods hit frequently. The model we use for assessing potential flood damage determines risk scenarios by overlaying flood hazard maps and economic asset data. In Italy, hazard maps are provided by Regional Authorities through the Hydrogeological System Management Plan (PAI) based on EU Flood Directive guidelines. The PAI in the study area includes both the large plain and the secondary river system and considers three hazard scenarios of Low, Medium and High Frequency associated with return periods of 20, 200 and 500 years and related water levels. By an overlay of PAI maps and residential areas, visualized on a GIS, we determine which existing built-up areas are at risk for flood according to each scenario. Then we investigate the value of physical assets potentially affected by floods in terms of market values, using the database of the Italian Property Market Observatory (OMI), and in terms of reconstruction costs, by considering synthetic cost indexes of predominant building types (from census information) and PAI water height. This study illustrates a methodology to assess flood damage in urban settlements and aims to determine general guidelines that can be extended throughout Italy

Loss aversion and rent-seeking: An experimental study

OpenAIRE

Kong, Xiaojing

2008-01-01

We report an experiment designed to evaluate the impact of loss aversion on rent-seeking contests. We find, as theoretically predicted, a negative relationship between rent-seeking expenditures and loss aversion. However, for any degree of loss aversion, levels of rent-seeking expenditure are higher than predicted. Moreover, we find that the effect of loss aversion becomes weaker with repetition of the contest.

A Strategy for a Parametric Flood Insurance Using Proxies

Science.gov (United States)

Haraguchi, M.; Lall, U.

2017-12-01

Traditionally, the design of flood control infrastructure and flood plain zoning require the estimation of return periods, which have been calculated by river hydraulic models with rainfall-runoff models. However, this multi-step modeling process leads to significant uncertainty to assess inundation. In addition, land use change and changing climate alter the potential losses, as well as make the modeling results obsolete. For these reasons, there is a strong need to create parametric indexes for the financial risk transfer for large flood events, to enable rapid response and recovery. Hence, this study examines the possibility of developing a parametric flood index at the national or regional level in Asia, which can be quickly mobilized after catastrophic floods. Specifically, we compare a single trigger based on rainfall index with multiple triggers using rainfall and streamflow indices by conducting case studies in Bangladesh and Thailand. The proposed methodology is 1) selecting suitable indices of rainfall and streamflow (if available), 2) identifying trigger levels for specified return periods for losses using stepwise and logistic regressions, 3) measuring the performance of indices, and 4) deriving return periods of selected windows and trigger levels. Based on the methodology, actual trigger levels were identified for Bangladesh and Thailand. Models based on multiple triggers reduced basis risks, an inherent problem in an index insurance. The proposed parametric flood index can be applied to countries with similar geographic and meteorological characteristics, and serve as a promising method for ex-ante risk financing for developing countries. This work is intended to be a preliminary work supporting future work on pricing risk transfer mechanisms in ex-ante risk finance.

Evaluation of the wind pumped hydropower storage integrated flood mitigation system

Science.gov (United States)

Safi, Aishah; Basrawi, Firdaus

2018-04-01

As Wind Pumped Hydropower Storage (WPHS) need high cost to construct, it is important to study their impacts on economic and environmental aspects. Thus, this research aims to evaluate their economic and environmental performances. First, Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) was used to simulate power generation system with and without the flood reservoir. Next, the total amount of emitted air pollutant was used to evaluate the environmental impacts. It was found the wind-diesel with reservoir storage system (A-III) will have much lower NPC than other systems that do not include reservoir for flood mitigation when the cost of flood losses are included in the total Net Present Cost (NPC). The NPC for system A-III was RM 1.52 million and for diesel standalone system (A-I) is RM 10.8 million when the cost of flood losses are included in the total NPC. Between both energy systems, the amount of pollutants emitted by the A-III system was only 408 kg-CO2/year which is much less than the A-I system which is 99, 754 kg of carbon dioxide per year. To conclude, the WPHS integrated with flood mitigation system seems promising in the aspects of economic and environment.

Policy learning for flood mitigation: a longitudinal assessment of the community rating system in Florida.

Science.gov (United States)

Brody, Samuel D; Zahran, Sammy; Highfield, Wesley E; Bernhardt, Sarah P; Vedlitz, Arnold

2009-06-01

Floods continue to inflict the most damage upon human communities among all natural hazards in the United States. Because localized flooding tends to be spatially repetitive over time, local decisionmakers often have an opportunity to learn from previous events and make proactive policy adjustments to reduce the adverse effects of a subsequent storm. Despite the importance of understanding the degree to which local jurisdictions learn from flood risks and under what circumstances, little if any empirical, longitudinal research has been conducted along these lines. This article addresses the research gap by examining the change in local flood mitigation policies in Florida from 1999 to 2005. We track 18 different mitigation activities organized into four series of activities under the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Community Rating System (CRS) for every local jurisdiction in Florida participating in the FEMA program on a yearly time step. We then identify the major factors contributing to policy changes based on CRS scores over the seven-year study period. Using multivariate statistical models to analyze both natural and social science data, we isolate the effects of several variables categorized into the following groups: hydrologic conditions, flood disaster history, socioeconomic and human capital controls. Results indicate that local jurisdictions do in fact learn from histories of flood risk and this process is expedited under specific conditions.

Probabilistic Flood Mapping using Volunteered Geographical Information

Science.gov (United States)

Rivera, S. J.; Girons Lopez, M.; Seibert, J.; Minsker, B. S.

2016-12-01

Flood extent maps are widely used by decision makers and first responders to provide critical information that prevents economic impacts and the loss of human lives. These maps are usually obtained from sensory data and/or hydrologic models, which often have limited coverage in space and time. Recent developments in social media and communication technology have created a wealth of near-real-time, user-generated content during flood events in many urban areas, such as flooded locations, pictures of flooding extent and height, etc. These data could improve decision-making and response operations as events unfold. However, the integration of these data sources has been limited due to the need for methods that can extract and translate the data into useful information for decision-making. This study presents an approach that uses volunteer geographic information (VGI) and non-traditional data sources (i.e., Twitter, Flicker, YouTube, and 911 and 311 calls) to generate/update the flood extent maps in areas where no models and/or gauge data are operational. The approach combines Web-crawling and computer vision techniques to gather information about the location, extent, and water height of the flood from unstructured textual data, images, and videos. These estimates are then used to provide an updated flood extent map for areas surrounding the geo-coordinate of the VGI through the application of a Hydro Growing Region Algorithm (HGRA). HGRA combines hydrologic and image segmentation concepts to estimate a probabilistic flooding extent along the corresponding creeks. Results obtained for a case study in Austin, TX (i.e., 2015 Memorial Day flood) were comparable to those obtained by a calibrated hydrologic model and had good spatial correlation with flooding extents estimated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Flood mitigation strategies for the Red River Delta

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hansson, K.; Ekenberg, L.

2002-01-01

The increase of natural disasters and especially floods are escalating economical losses. Governments of both developed and developing countries are therefore concerned with increasing post-disaster liabilities in aiding recovery, repairing infrastructure damage and compensation of victims. In particular, governments of developing countries are ill prepared to cover the financial losses of disasters. Moreover, they often experience difficulties in raising funds for the recovery process. In this article, we identify possible policy strategies for coping with complex environmental and social decisions with flood risk involved; using The Red River Delta in Vietnam as a case for investigating various strategies. The paper is concluded with an outline of a model used for policy scenario simulations as well as some very preliminary results from evaluation of three possible policy strategies for The Red River Delta. (author)

A coupled weather generator - rainfall-runoff approach on hourly time steps for flood risk analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Winter, Benjamin; Schneeberger, Klaus; Dung Nguyen, Viet; Vorogushyn, Sergiy; Huttenlau, Matthias; Merz, Bruno; Stötter, Johann

2017-04-01

The evaluation of potential monetary damage of flooding is an essential part of flood risk management. One possibility to estimate the monetary risk is to analyze long time series of observed flood events and their corresponding damages. In reality, however, only few flood events are documented. This limitation can be overcome by the generation of a set of synthetic, physically and spatial plausible flood events and subsequently the estimation of the resulting monetary damages. In the present work, a set of synthetic flood events is generated by a continuous rainfall-runoff simulation in combination with a coupled weather generator and temporal disaggregation procedure for the study area of Vorarlberg (Austria). Most flood risk studies focus on daily time steps, however, the mesoscale alpine study area is characterized by short concentration times, leading to large differences between daily mean and daily maximum discharge. Accordingly, an hourly time step is needed for the simulations. The hourly metrological input for the rainfall-runoff model is generated in a two-step approach. A synthetic daily dataset is generated by a multivariate and multisite weather generator and subsequently disaggregated to hourly time steps with a k-Nearest-Neighbor model. Following the event generation procedure, the negative consequences of flooding are analyzed. The corresponding flood damage for each synthetic event is estimated by combining the synthetic discharge at representative points of the river network with a loss probability relation for each community in the study area. The loss probability relation is based on exposure and susceptibility analyses on a single object basis (residential buildings) for certain return periods. For these impact analyses official inundation maps of the study area are used. Finally, by analyzing the total event time series of damages, the expected annual damage or losses associated with a certain probability of occurrence can be estimated for

Combining hazard, exposure and social vulnerability to provide lessons for flood risk management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Koks, E.E.; Jongman, B.; Husby, T.G.; Botzen, W.J.W.

2015-01-01

Flood risk assessments provide inputs for the evaluation of flood risk management (FRM) strategies. Traditionally, such risk assessments provide estimates of loss of life and economic damage. However, the effect of policy measures aimed at reducing risk also depends on the capacity of households to

Haben repetitive DNA-Sequenzen biologische Funktionen?

Science.gov (United States)

John, Maliyakal E.; Knöchel, Walter

1983-05-01

By DNA reassociation kinetics it is known that the eucaryotic genome consists of non-repetitive DNA, middle-repetitive DNA and highly repetitive DNA. Whereas the majority of protein-coding genes is located on non-repetitive DNA, repetitive DNA forms a constitutive part of eucaryotic DNA and its amount in most cases equals or even substantially exceeds that of non-repetitive DNA. During the past years a large body of data on repetitive DNA has accumulated and these have prompted speculations ranging from specific roles in the regulation of gene expression to that of a selfish entity with inconsequential functions. The following article summarizes recent findings on structural, transcriptional and evolutionary aspects and, although by no means being proven, some possible biological functions are discussed.

Estimating the benefits of single value and probability forecasting for flood warning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

J. S. Verkade

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Flood risk can be reduced by means of flood forecasting, warning and response systems (FFWRS. These systems include a forecasting sub-system which is imperfect, meaning that inherent uncertainties in hydrological forecasts may result in false alarms and missed events. This forecasting uncertainty decreases the potential reduction of flood risk, but is seldom accounted for in estimates of the benefits of FFWRSs. In the present paper, a method to estimate the benefits of (imperfect FFWRSs in reducing flood risk is presented. The method is based on a hydro-economic model of expected annual damage (EAD due to flooding, combined with the concept of Relative Economic Value (REV. The estimated benefits include not only the reduction of flood losses due to a warning response, but also consider the costs of the warning response itself, as well as the costs associated with forecasting uncertainty. The method allows for estimation of the benefits of FFWRSs that use either deterministic or probabilistic forecasts. Through application to a case study, it is shown that FFWRSs using a probabilistic forecast have the potential to realise higher benefits at all lead-times. However, it is also shown that provision of warning at increasing lead-time does not necessarily lead to an increasing reduction of flood risk, but rather that an optimal lead-time at which warnings are provided can be established as a function of forecast uncertainty and the cost-loss ratio of the user receiving and responding to the warning.

Surfactant loss control in chemical flooding: Spectroscopic and calorimetric study of adsorption and precipitation on reservoir minerals. Annual report, September 30, 1992--September 30, 1993

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Somasundaran, P.

1994-07-01

The aim of this research project is to investigate mechanisms underlying adsorption and surface precipitation of flooding surfactants on reservoir minerals. Effects of surfactant structure, surfactant combinations, various inorganic and polymeric species, and solids mineralogy will be determined. A multi-pronged approach consisting of micro & nano spectroscopy, microcalorimetry, electrokinetics, surface tension and wettability; is used in this study. The results obtained should help in controlling surfactant loss in chemical flooding and in developing optimum structures and conditions for efficient chemical flooding processes. During the first year of this three year contract, adsorption of single surfactants and select surfactant mixtures was studied at the solid-liquid and gas-liquid interfaces. Surfactants studied include alkyl xylene sulfonates, polyethoxylated alkyl phenols, octaethylene glycol mono n-decyl ether, and tetradecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride. Adsorption of surfactant mixtures of varying composition was also investigated. The microstructure of the adsorbed layer was characterized using fluorescence spectroscopy. Changes interfacial properties such as wettability, electrokinetics and stability of reservoir minerals were correlated with the amount of reagent adsorbed. Strong effects of the structure of the surfactant and position of functional groups were revealed.

Chemical weathering outputs from the flood plain of the Ganga

Science.gov (United States)

Bickle, Michael J.; Chapman, Hazel J.; Tipper, Edward; Galy, Albert; De La Rocha, Christina L.; Ahmad, Talat

2018-03-01

Transport of sediment across riverine flood plains contributes a significant but poorly constrained fraction of the total chemical weathering fluxes from rapidly eroding mountain belts which has important implications for chemical fluxes to the oceans and the impact of orogens on long term climate. We report water and bedload chemical analyses from the Ganges flood-plain, a major transit reservoir of sediment from the Himalayan orogen. Our data comprise six major southern tributaries to the Ganga, 31 additional analyses of major rivers from the Himalayan front in Nepal, 79 samples of the Ganga collected close to the mouth below the Farakka barrage every two weeks over three years and 67 water and 8 bedload samples from tributaries confined to the Ganga flood plain. The flood plain tributaries are characterised by a shallow δ18O - δD array, compared to the meteoric water line, with a low δDexcess from evaporative loss from the flood plain which is mirrored in the higher δDexcess of the mountain rivers in Nepal. The stable-isotope data confirms that the waters in the flood plain tributaries are dominantly derived from flood plain rainfall and not by redistribution of waters from the mountains. The flood plain tributaries are chemically distinct from the major Himalayan rivers. They can be divided into two groups. Tributaries from a small area around the Kosi river have 87Sr/86Sr ratios >0.75 and molar Na/Ca ratios as high as 6. Tributaries from the rest of the flood plain have 87Sr/86Sr ratios ≤0.74 and most have Na/Ca ratios waters have lost up to 70% of their Ca (average ∼ 50%) to precipitation of secondary calcite which is abundant as a diagenetic cement in the flood plain sediments. 31% of the Sr, 8% of the Ca and 45% of the Mg are calculated to be derived from silicate minerals. Because of significant evaporative loss of water across the flood plain, and in the absence of hydrological data for flood plain tributaries, chemical weathering fluxes from the

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Tree-Based Models for Multi-Variate Flood Damage Assessment in Australia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roozbeh Hasanzadeh Nafari

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Flood is a frequent natural hazard that has significant financial consequences for Australia. In Australia, physical losses caused by floods are commonly estimated by stage-damage functions. These methods usually consider only the depth of the water and the type of buildings at risk. However, flood damage is a complicated process, and it is dependent on a variety of factors which are rarely taken into account. This study explores the interaction, importance, and influence of water depth, flow velocity, water contamination, precautionary measures, emergency measures, flood experience, floor area, building value, building quality, and socioeconomic status. The study uses tree-based models (regression trees and bagging decision trees and a dataset collected from 2012 to 2013 flood events in Queensland, which includes information on structural damages, impact parameters, and resistance variables. The tree-based approaches show water depth, floor area, precautionary measures, building value, and building quality to be important damage-influencing parameters. Furthermore, the performance of the tree-based models is validated and contrasted with the outcomes of a multi-parameter loss function (FLFArs from Australia. The tree-based models are shown to be more accurate than the stage-damage function. Consequently, considering more parameters and taking advantage of tree-based models is recommended. The outcome is important for improving established Australian flood loss models and assisting decision-makers and insurance companies dealing with flood risk assessment.

The significance of denitrification of applied nitrogen in fallow and cropped rice soils under different flooding regimes. Pt. 1

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fillery, I.R.P.; Vlek, P.L.G.

1982-01-01

The role of nitrification-denitrification in the loss of nitrogen from urea applied to puddled soils planted to rice and subjected to continuous and intermittent flooding was evaluated in three greenhouse pot studies. The loss of N via denitrification was estimated indirectly using the 15 N balance, after either first accounting for NH 3 volatilization or by analyzing the 15 N balance immediately before and after the soil was dried and reflooded. When urea was broadcast and incorporated the loss of 15 N from the soil-plant systems depended on the soil, being about 20% - 25% for the silt loams and only 10% - 12% for the clay. Ammonia volatilization accounted for an average 20% of the N applied in the silt loam. Denitrification losses could not account for more than 10% of the applied N in any of the continuously flooded soil-plant systems under study and were most likely less than 5%. Intermittent flooding of soil planted to rice did not increase the loss of N. Denitrification appeared to be an important loss mechanism in continuously flooded fallow soils, accounting for the loss of approximately 40% of the applied 15 N. Loss of 15 N was not appreciably enhanced in fallow soils undergoing intermittent flooding. Apparently, nitrate formed in oxidized zones in the soil was readily denitrified in the absence of plant roots. Extensive loss (66%) of 15 N-labeled nitrate was obtained when 100 mg/pot of nitrate-N was applied to the surface of nonflooded soil prior to reflooding. This result suggests that rice plants may not compete effectively with denitrifiers if large quantities of nitrate were to accumulate during intermittent dry periods. (orig.)

Flood early warning system in I.R. of Iran

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Samadi, Slina; Jamali, Javad B.; Javanmard, Soheila

2004-01-01

At the close of the twentieth century, natural hazards and disasters are one of the most common forms of disasters around the world. Natural disasters cause in significant loss of life and serious economic, environmental and social impacts that greatly retard the development process. Careful hazard assessment and planning, and a range of social, economic and political measures, can significantly contain these threats. Risk is defined as the potential for loss or damage as the result of a particular action or decision and Risk Management is a process consisting of well-defined steps which, when taken in sequence, support better decision making by contributing to a greater insight into risks and their impacts. Most commonly, there are three components in a natural disaster plan: monitoring and early warning; risk assessment; and mitigation and response. Given the improved tools and technologies available today, it is possible to provide disaster information and minimize the potential damage of disasters. In the following parts of the report, the national early warning systems for flood would be discussed, as one of the important component of natural disaster risk management. In 1. R. of Iran, also, different types of natural disasters occur, such as drought, flood, earthquake, sea-level rise, dust storm, hail, freezing and etc, but Flood hazard and disaster is one of the most frequent and damaging types of natural disasters. They have been the most common type of geophysical disaster in the latter half of the twentieth century in Iran, generating an estimated more than 20 percent of all disasters from 1950 to 2003. One of the hazardous floods of Iran occurred in Golestan and north of Khorasan provinces, located in north-east of the country, on August 2001 and 2002. In this regard, according to the responsibility of I. R. of Iran Meteorological Organization (IRIMO) on the flood forecasting, the early warning issue of the mentioned flood, issued within 48 hour's in

Feedback on flood risk management

Science.gov (United States)

Moreau, K.; Roumagnac, A.

2009-09-01

space technology, communication, meteorology, hydraulics and hydrology, Predict-services brings help to local communities in their mission of protection and information to the citizens, for flood problems and helps companies to limit and delete operating losses facing floods. The initiative, developped by BRL, EADS Astrium, in association with Meteo France, has been employed and is functioning on cities of south of France, notably on Montpellier, and also on the scale of catchment area( BRL is a regional development company, a public private partnership controlled by the local gouvernments of the Languedoc-Roussillon Region). The initiative has to be coordinated with state services to secure continuity and coherence of information. This initiative is developped in dialogue with State services as Météo France, the Ministry for the interior, the Ministry for ecology and the durable development, the Regional Direction of the Environment (DIREN), the Central service of Hydrometeorology and Support to the Forecast of the Floods ( SCHAPI) and service of forecast of rising (SPC). It has been successfully functioning for 5 years with 300 southern cities from South West to South East of France and notably Montpellier and Sommières, famous for it’s flood problems on the Vidourle river where no human loss was to regret and where the economic impacts were minimized. Actually developed in cities of South of France, this initiative is to be developed nationaly and very soon internationally. Thanks to the efficiency of it’s method, this initiative is also developed in partnership with insurance company involved in prevention actions. The presentation will expose the feedback of this initiative and lessons learned.

Characterization of flood and precipitation events in Southwestern Germany and stochastic simulation of extreme precipitation (Project FLORIS-SV)

Science.gov (United States)

Florian, Ehmele; Michael, Kunz

2016-04-01

Several major flood events occurred in Germany in the past 15-20 years especially in the eastern parts along the rivers Elbe and Danube. Examples include the major floods of 2002 and 2013 with an estimated loss of about 2 billion Euros each. The last major flood events in the State of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany occurred in the years 1978 and 1993/1994 along the rivers Rhine and Neckar with an estimated total loss of about 150 million Euros (converted) each. Flood hazard originates from a combination of different meteorological, hydrological and hydraulic processes. Currently there is no defined methodology available for evaluating and quantifying the flood hazard and related risk for larger areas or whole river catchments instead of single gauges. In order to estimate the probable maximum loss for higher return periods (e.g. 200 years, PML200), a stochastic model approach is designed since observational data are limited in time and space. In our approach, precipitation is linearly composed of three elements: background precipitation, orographically-induces precipitation, and a convectively-driven part. We use linear theory of orographic precipitation formation for the stochastic precipitation model (SPM), which is based on fundamental statistics of relevant atmospheric variables. For an adequate number of historic flood events, the corresponding atmospheric conditions and parameters are determined in order to calculate a probability density function (pdf) for each variable. This method involves all theoretically possible scenarios which may not have happened, yet. This work is part of the FLORIS-SV (FLOod RISk Sparkassen Versicherung) project and establishes the first step of a complete modelling chain of the flood risk. On the basis of the generated stochastic precipitation event set, hydrological and hydraulic simulations will be performed to estimate discharge and water level. The resulting stochastic flood event set will be used to quantify the

Grief and Loss as Alzheimer's Progresses

Science.gov (United States)

... Caregiving Middle-Stage Caregiving Late-Stage Caregiving Behaviors Aggression & Anger Anxiety & Agitation Depression Hallucinations Memory Loss & Confusion Repetition Sleep Issues & Sundowning Suspicion & Delusions Wandering Abuse Start Here What You Need to Know Online ...

An Investigation on the Sensitivity of the Parameters of Urban Flood Model

Science.gov (United States)

M, A. B.; Lohani, B.; Jain, A.

2015-12-01

Global climatic change has triggered weather patterns which lead to heavy and sudden rainfall in different parts of world. The impact of heavy rainfall is severe especially on urban areas in the form of urban flooding. In order to understand the effect of heavy rainfall induced flooding, it is necessary to model the entire flooding scenario more accurately, which is now becoming possible with the availability of high resolution airborne LiDAR data and other real time observations. However, there is not much understanding on the optimal use of these data and on the effect of other parameters on the performance of the flood model. This study aims at developing understanding on these issues. In view of the above discussion, the aim of this study is to (i) understand that how the use of high resolution LiDAR data improves the performance of urban flood model, and (ii) understand the sensitivity of various hydrological parameters on urban flood modelling. In this study, modelling of flooding in urban areas due to heavy rainfall is carried out considering Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India as the study site. The existing model MIKE FLOOD, which is accepted by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is used along with the high resolution airborne LiDAR data. Once the model is setup it is made to run by changing the parameters such as resolution of Digital Surface Model (DSM), manning's roughness, initial losses, catchment description, concentration time, runoff reduction factor. In order to realize this, the results obtained from the model are compared with the field observations. The parametric study carried out in this work demonstrates that the selection of catchment description plays a very important role in urban flood modelling. Results also show the significant impact of resolution of DSM, initial losses and concentration time on urban flood model. This study will help in understanding the effect of various parameters that should be part of a

Dam-breach analysis and flood-inundation mapping for selected dams in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and near Atoka, Oklahoma

Science.gov (United States)

Shivers, Molly J.; Smith, S. Jerrod; Grout, Trevor S.; Lewis, Jason M.

2015-01-01

Dams provide beneficial functions such as flood control, recreation, and storage of water supplies, but they also entail risk; dam breaches and resultant floods can cause substantial property damage and loss of life. The State of Oklahoma requires each owner of a high-hazard dam, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency defines as dams for which failure or improper operation probably will cause loss of human life, to develop an emergency action plan specific to that dam. Components of an emergency action plan are to simulate a flood resulting from a possible dam breach and map the resulting downstream flood-inundation areas. The resulting flood-inundation maps can provide valuable information to city officials, emergency managers, and local residents for planning an emergency response if a dam breach occurs.

High frequency repetitive sensory stimulation as intervention to improve sensory loss in patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS I

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marianne eDavid

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Achieving perceptual gains in healthy individuals, or facilitating rehabilitation in patients is generally considered to require intense training to engage neuronal plasticity mechanisms. Recent work, however, suggested that beneficial outcome similar to training can be effectively acquired by a complementary approach in which the learning occurs in response to mere exposure to repetitive sensory stimulation (rSS. For example, high-frequency repetitive sensory stimulation (HF-rSS enhances tactile performance and induces cortical reorganization in healthy subjects and patients after stroke. Patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS show impaired tactile performance associated with shrinkage of cortical maps. We here investigated the feasibility and efficacy of HF-rSS, and low-frequency rSS (LF-rSS to enhance tactile performance and reduce pain intensity in 20 patients with CRPS type I. Intermittent high or low frequency electrical stimuli were applied for 45min/day to all fingertips of the affected hand for 5 days. Main outcome measures were spatial 2-point-discrimination thresholds and mechanical detection thresholds measured on the tip of the index finger bilaterally. Secondary endpoint was current pain intensity. All measures were assessed before and on day 5 after the last stimulation session. HF-rSS applied in 16 patients improved tactile discrimination on the affected hand significantly without changes contralaterally. Current pain intensity remained unchanged on average, but decreased in 4 patients by 30%. This limited pain relief might be due to the short stimulation period of 5 days only. In contrast, after LF-rSS, tactile discrimination was impaired in all 4 patients, while detection thresholds and pain were not affected. Our data suggest that HF-rSS could be used as a novel approach in CRPS treatment to improve sensory loss. Longer treatment periods might be required to induce consistent pain relief.

Flood hazard assessment in areas prone to flash flooding

Science.gov (United States)

Kvočka, Davor; Falconer, Roger A.; Bray, Michaela

2016-04-01

Contemporary climate projections suggest that there will be an increase in the occurrence of high-intensity rainfall events in the future. These precipitation extremes are usually the main cause for the emergence of extreme flooding, such as flash flooding. Flash floods are among the most unpredictable, violent and fatal natural hazards in the world. Furthermore, it is expected that flash flooding will occur even more frequently in the future due to more frequent development of extreme weather events, which will greatly increase the danger to people caused by flash flooding. This being the case, there will be a need for high resolution flood hazard maps in areas susceptible to flash flooding. This study investigates what type of flood hazard assessment methods should be used for assessing the flood hazard to people caused by flash flooding. Two different types of flood hazard assessment methods were tested: (i) a widely used method based on an empirical analysis, and (ii) a new, physically based and experimentally calibrated method. Two flash flood events were considered herein, namely: the 2004 Boscastle flash flood and the 2007 Železniki flash flood. The results obtained in this study suggest that in the areas susceptible to extreme flooding, the flood hazard assessment should be conducted using methods based on a mechanics-based analysis. In comparison to standard flood hazard assessment methods, these physically based methods: (i) take into account all of the physical forces, which act on a human body in floodwater, (ii) successfully adapt to abrupt changes in the flow regime, which often occur for flash flood events, and (iii) rapidly assess a flood hazard index in a relatively short period of time.

Risk-based planning and optimization of flood management measures in developing countries : Case Pakistan

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Tariq, M.A.U.R.

2011-01-01

About 95-97% of all deaths and a significant part of the economic losses caused by floods occur in developing countries. Despite the resources spent on different measures, flood management arrangements in developing countries are still unable to deliver satisfactory results. The objective of this

Seeking a paleontological signature for mass extinctions caused by flood basalt eruptions

Science.gov (United States)

Payne, J.; Bush, A. M.; Chang, E. T.; Heim, N. A.; Knope, M. L.; Pruss, S. B.

2016-12-01

Flood basalt eruptions coincide with numerous extinction events in the fossil record. Increasingly precise absolute age determinations for both the timing of eruption and of species extinctions have strengthened the case for flood basalt eruptions as the single most important trigger for major mass extinction events in the fossil record. However, the extent to which flood basalt eruptions cause a pattern of biotic loss distinctive from extinctions triggered by other geological or biological processes remains an open question. In the absence of diagnostic mapping between geological triggers and biological losses, establishing the identities of causal agents for mass extinctions will continue to depend primarily on evidence for temporal coincidence. Here we use a synoptic database of marine animal genera spanning the Phanerozoic, including times of first and last occurrence, body size, motility, life position, feeding mode, and respiratory physiology to assess whether extinction events temporally associated with flood basalt eruptions exhibit a diagnostic pattern of extinction selectivity. We further ask whether any events not associated with known large igneous provinces nevertheless display extinction patterns suggestive of such a cause. Finally, we ask whether extinction events associated with other primary causes, such as glaciation or bolide impact, are distinguishable from events apparently triggered by flood basalt eruptions on the basis of extinction selectivity patterns

Probabilistic Flood Defence Assessment Tools

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Slomp Robert

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The WTI2017 project is responsible for the development of flood defence assessment tools for the 3600 km of Dutch primary flood defences, dikes/levees, dunes and hydraulic structures. These tools are necessary, as per January 1st 2017, the new flood risk management policy for the Netherlands will be implemented. Then, the seven decades old design practice (maximum water level methodology of 1958 and two decades old safety standards (and maximum hydraulic load methodology of 1996 will formally be replaced by a more risked based approach for the national policy in flood risk management. The formal flood defence assessment is an important part of this new policy, especially for flood defence managers, since national and regional funding for reinforcement is based on this assessment. This new flood defence policy is based on a maximum allowable probability of flooding. For this, a maximum acceptable individual risk was determined at 1/100 000 per year, this is the probability of life loss of for every protected area in the Netherlands. Safety standards of flood defences were then determined based on this acceptable individual risk. The results were adjusted based on information from cost -benefit analysis, societal risk and large scale societal disruption due to the failure of critical infrastructure e.g. power stations. The resulting riskbased flood defence safety standards range from a 300 to a 100 000 year return period for failure. Two policy studies, WV21 (Safety from floods in the 21st century and VNK-2 (the National Flood Risk in 2010 provided the essential information to determine the new risk based safety standards for flood defences. The WTI2017 project will provide the safety assessment tools based on these new standards and is thus an essential element for the implementation of this policy change. A major issue to be tackled was the development of user-friendly tools, as the new assessment is to be carried out by personnel of the

Financing increasing flood risk: evidence from millions of buildings

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Jongman, B.; Koks, E. E.; Husby, T. G.; Ward, P. J.

2014-01-01

The effectiveness of disaster risk management and financing mechanisms depends on the accurate assessment of current and future hazard exposure. The increasing availability of detailed data offers policy makers and the insurance sector new opportunities to understand trends in risk, and to make informed decisions on the ways to deal with these trends. In this paper we show how comprehensive property level information can be used for the assessment of exposure to flooding on a national scale, and how this information can contribute to discussions on possible risk financing practices. The case-study used is the Netherlands, which is one of the countries most exposed to flooding globally, and which is currently undergoing a debate on strategies for the compensation of potential losses. Our results show that flood exposure has increased rapidly between 1960 and 2012, and that the growth of the building stock and its economic value in flood prone areas has been higher than in not flood prone areas. We also find that property values in flood prone areas are lower than those in not flood prone areas. We argue that the increase in the share of economic value located in potential flood prone areas can have a negative effect on the feasibility of private insurance schemes in the Netherlands. The methodologies and results presented in this study are relevant for many regions around the world where the effects of rising flood exposure create a challenge for risk financing.

Repetition and lag effects in movement recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, C R; Buckolz, E

1982-03-01

Whether repetition and lag improve the recognition of movement patterns was investigated. Recognition memory was tested for one repetition, two-repetitions massed, and two-repetitions distributed with movement patterns at lags of 3, 5, 7, and 13. Recognition performance was examined both immediately afterwards and following a 48 hour delay. Both repetition and lag effects failed to be demonstrated, providing some support for the claim that memory is unaffected by repetition at a constant level of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). There was, as expected, a significant decrease in recognition memory following the retention interval, but this appeared unrelated to repetition or lag.

A GIS based flood risk mapping along the Niger-Benue river basin in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Floods are water induced disasters that lead to temporary inundation of dry land and cause serious damages in the affected location such as loss of lives and properties and destruction of infrastructures. They have become common occurrences in every part Nigeria and the recorded impacts of flooding on the inhabitants ...

Pluvial, urban flood mechanisms and characteristics - Assessment based on insurance claims

Science.gov (United States)

Sörensen, Johanna; Mobini, Shifteh

2017-12-01

Pluvial flooding is a problem in many cities and for city planning purpose the mechanisms behind pluvial flooding are of interest. Previous studies seldom use insurance claim data to analyse city scale characteristics that lead to flooding. In the present study, two long time series (∼20 years) of flood claims from property owners have been collected and analysed in detail to investigate the mechanisms and characteristics leading to urban flooding. The flood claim data come from the municipal water utility company and property owners with insurance that covers property loss from overland flooding, groundwater intrusion through basement walls and flooding from the drainage system. These data are used as a proxy for flood severity for several events in the Swedish city of Malmö. It is discussed which rainfall characteristics give most flooding and why some rainfall events do not lead to severe flooding, how city scale topography and sewerage system type influence spatial distribution of flood claims, and which impact high sea level has on flooding in Malmö. Three severe flood events are described in detail and compared with a number of smaller flood events. It was found that the main mechanisms and characteristics of flood extent and its spatial distribution in Malmö are intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall, distance to the main sewer system as well as overland flow paths, and type of drainage system, while high sea level has little impact on the flood extent. Finally, measures that could be taken to lower the flood risk in Malmö, and other cities with similar characteristics, are discussed.

Prediction of the Maximum Number of Repetitions and Repetitions in Reserve From Barbell Velocity.

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García-Ramos, Amador; Torrejón, Alejandro; Feriche, Belén; Morales-Artacho, Antonio J; Pérez-Castilla, Alejandro; Padial, Paulino; Haff, Guy Gregory

2018-03-01

To provide 2 general equations to estimate the maximum possible number of repetitions (XRM) from the mean velocity (MV) of the barbell and the MV associated with a given number of repetitions in reserve, as well as to determine the between-sessions reliability of the MV associated with each XRM. After determination of the bench-press 1-repetition maximum (1RM; 1.15 ± 0.21 kg/kg body mass), 21 men (age 23.0 ± 2.7 y, body mass 72.7 ± 8.3 kg, body height 1.77 ± 0.07 m) completed 4 sets of as many repetitions as possible against relative loads of 60%1RM, 70%1RM, 80%1RM, and 90%1RM over 2 separate sessions. The different loads were tested in a randomized order with 10 min of rest between them. All repetitions were performed at the maximum intended velocity. Both the general equation to predict the XRM from the fastest MV of the set (CV = 15.8-18.5%) and the general equation to predict MV associated with a given number of repetitions in reserve (CV = 14.6-28.8%) failed to provide data with acceptable between-subjects variability. However, a strong relationship (median r 2  = .984) and acceptable reliability (CV  .85) were observed between the fastest MV of the set and the XRM when considering individual data. These results indicate that generalized group equations are not acceptable methods for estimating the XRM-MV relationship or the number of repetitions in reserve. When attempting to estimate the XRM-MV relationship, one must use individualized relationships to objectively estimate the exact number of repetitions that can be performed in a training set.

Regional flood impact assessment for Kiel and Eckernförde, Germany

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Shustikova, Iuliia; Viavattene, Christophe; Seiß, Guntram

2017-04-01

It is well-observed that extreme flood events bring considerable destruction to coastal communities. The estimates of damage increases when direct and indirect losses are both considered in the assessment. This study applied the INtegrated DisRuption Assessment (INDRA) model which is designed to estimate and compare not only tangible but also intangible losses such as risk to life, recovery mechanisms and household displacement. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) was performed in order to compare hotspots of high flood risk on the regional scale and detect which impact indicators influence results the most. INDRA allowed assessing the following impact indicators: direct damages to buildings and roads, transport disruption, risk to life and financial recovery mechanisms of private households and businesses. The focus was on two hotspots of flood risk, where direct and indirect impacts from 200 years flood were assessed and analyzed in terms of relative importance to the region. The region here was defined as municipalities located on the Baltic Sea coast within the Schleswig-Holstein state, Germany. The hotspots are the towns of Kiel and Eckernförde. They are urban areas with a high concentration of people and assets, which previously experienced extreme flood events. From the performed investigation it was found out that modeled flood differently impacts Kiel and Eckernförde. The results produced by MCA show that the scores of direct and indirect damage are slightly higher in Eckernförde than in Kiel. Transport disruption is a compelling element in the performed regional impact assessment and demonstrated immense weight. Extreme events may pose significant direct and indirect impacts on the coastal roads, obstructing not only the access to important landmarks such as hospitals, train stations, harbors, etc. but also to contiguous municipalities. Yet, the analysis showed that other impact indicators are rather of local importance and would not cause vast damage on a

Modulation of Extreme Flood Levels by Impoundment Significantly Offset by Floodplain Loss Downstream of the Three Gorges Dam

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Mei, Xuefei; Dai, Zhijun; Darby, Stephen E.; Gao, Shu; Wang, Jie; Jiang, Weiguo

2018-04-01

River flooding—the world's most significant natural hazard—is likely to increase under anthropogenic climate change. Most large rivers have been regulated by damming, but the extent to which these impoundments can mitigate extreme flooding remains uncertain. Here the catastrophic 2016 flood on the Changjiang River is first analyzed to assess the effects of both the Changjiang's reservoir cascade and the Three Gorges Dam (TGD), the world's largest hydraulic engineering project on downstream flood discharge and water levels. We show that the Changjiang's reservoir cascade impounded over 30.0 × 103 m3/s of flow at the peak of the flood on 25 July 2016, preventing the occurrence of what would otherwise have been the second largest flood ever recorded in the reach downstream of the TGD. Half of this flood water storage was retained by the TGD alone, meaning that impoundment by the TGD reduced peak water levels at the Datong hydrometric station (on 25 July) by 1.47 m, compared to pre-TGD conditions. However, downstream morphological changes, in particular, extensive erosion of the natural floodplain, offset this reduction in water level by 0.22 m, so that the full beneficial impact of floodwater retention by the TGD was not fully realized. Our results highlight how morphological adjustments downstream of large dams may inhibit their full potential to mitigate extreme flood risk.

Development of flood index by characterisation of flood hydrographs

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Bhattacharya, Biswa; Suman, Asadusjjaman

2015-04-01

In recent years the world has experienced deaths, large-scale displacement of people, billions of Euros of economic damage, mental stress and ecosystem impacts due to flooding. Global changes (climate change, population and economic growth, and urbanisation) are exacerbating the severity of flooding. The 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 floods in Australia and Thailand demonstrate the need for concerted action in the face of global societal and environmental changes to strengthen resilience against flooding. Due to climatological characteristics there are catchments where flood forecasting may have a relatively limited role and flood event management may have to be trusted upon. For example, in flash flood catchments, which often may be tiny and un-gauged, flood event management often depends on approximate prediction tools such as flash flood guidance (FFG). There are catchments fed largely by flood waters coming from upstream catchments, which are un-gauged or due to data sharing issues in transboundary catchments the flow of information from upstream catchment is limited. Hydrological and hydraulic modelling of these downstream catchments will never be sufficient to provide any required forecasting lead time and alternative tools to support flood event management will be required. In FFG, or similar approaches, the primary motif is to provide guidance by synthesising the historical data. We follow a similar approach to characterise past flood hydrographs to determine a flood index (FI), which varies in space and time with flood magnitude and its propagation. By studying the variation of the index the pockets of high flood risk, requiring attention, can be earmarked beforehand. This approach can be very useful in flood risk management of catchments where information about hydro-meteorological variables is inadequate for any forecasting system. This paper presents the development of FI and its application to several catchments including in Kentucky in the USA

Fiji's worst natural disaster: the 1931 hurricane and flood.

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Yeo, Stephen W; Blong, Russell J

2010-07-01

At least 225 people in the Fiji Islands died as a result of the 1931 hurricane and flood, representing the largest loss of life from a natural disaster in Fiji's recent history. This paper explores the causes of disaster and the potential for recurrence. The disaster occurred because a rare event surprised hundreds of people-especially recently settled Indian farmers-occupying highly exposed floodplains in north-west Viti Levu island. The likelihood of a flood disaster of such proportions occurring today has been diminished by changed settlement patterns and building materials; however, a trend towards re-occupancy of floodplains, sometimes in fragile dwellings, is exposing new generations to flood risks. The contribution of this paper to the global hazards literature is set out in three sections: the ethnicity, gender and age of flood fatalities; the naturalness of disasters; and the merit of choice and constraint as explanations for patterns of vulnerability.

The 2-3 November 2015 flood of the Sió River (NE Iberian Peninsula): a flash flood that turns into a mudflow downstream

Science.gov (United States)

Carles Balasch Solanes, Josep; Lluís Ruiz-Bellet, Josep; Rodríguez, Rafael; Tuset, Jordi; Castelltort, Xavier; Barriendos, Mariano; Pino, David; Mazón, Jordi

2016-04-01

Historical and recent evidence shows that many floods in the interior of Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula) usually have such a great sediment load that can even alter the hydraulic behaviour of the flow. This is especially true in catchments with a great proportion of agricultural soils, which are the main source of sediment. The night of 2-3 November 2015 torrential rains fell on the headwaters of the Sió River catchment (508 km2); the subsequent flood caused four deaths and many damages along the stream. The hydrological, hydraulic and sedimentary characteristics of this recent flood have been analysed in order to gain a better insight on the characteristics of the major historical floods in the same catchment. The rainfall height on the headwaters was between 139 and 146 mm in ten hours, with a maximum intensity of about 50 mm·h-1. In the rest of the catchment it rained much less (22-71 mm). The agricultural soils in the headwaters show evidence of intense erosion by laminar and concentrated Hortonian overland flow in their superficial layer (Ap1; 10 cm), which uncovered the more compact underlying layer (Ap2). The peak flow in the headwaters (Oluges) was 90 m3·s-1 (that is, a specific peak flow near 1 m3·s-1·km-2) and it diminished downstream: 40 m3·s-1 in the centre of the catchment (Oluges + 27 km) and 15 m3·s-1 in the outlet (Oluges + 54 km). The suspended sediment load was 10-15% in volume in the headwaters and, judging from recorded images and eyewitnesses, it increased as the flow moved downstream, turning the flash flood into a mudflow. This concentration gain was most probably caused by the flood wave's water loss due to the dryness of the riverbed and translated in an increased viscosity that ultimately altered the hydraulic behaviour of the flow, slowing it down. This process of water loss has been observed in flash floods in dry riverbeds in arid and semiarid areas such as Negev (Israel) and Atacama (Chile). Historical floods in neighbouring

Classification of mechanisms, climatic context, areal scaling, and synchronization of floods: the hydroclimatology of floods in the Upper Paraná River basin, Brazil

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C. H. R. Lima

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Floods are the main natural disaster in Brazil, causing substantial economic damage and loss of life. Studies suggest that some extreme floods result from a causal climate chain. Exceptional rain and floods are determined by large-scale anomalies and persistent patterns in the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, which influence the magnitude, extent, and duration of these extremes. Moreover, floods can result from different generating mechanisms. These factors contradict the assumptions of homogeneity, and often stationarity, in flood frequency analysis. Here we outline a methodological framework based on clustering using self-organizing maps (SOMs that allows the linkage of large-scale processes to local-scale observations. The methodology is applied to flood data from several sites in the flood-prone Upper Paraná River basin (UPRB in southern Brazil. The SOM clustering approach is employed to classify the 6-day rainfall field over the UPRB into four categories, which are then used to classify floods into four types based on the spatiotemporal dynamics of the rainfall field prior to the observed flood events. An analysis of the vertically integrated moisture fluxes, vorticity, and high-level atmospheric circulation revealed that these four clusters are related to known tropical and extratropical processes, including the South American low-level jet (SALLJ; extratropical cyclones; and the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ. Persistent anomalies in the sea surface temperature fields in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are also found to be associated with these processes. Floods associated with each cluster present different patterns in terms of frequency, magnitude, spatial variability, scaling, and synchronization of events across the sites and subbasins. These insights suggest new directions for flood risk assessment, forecasting, and management.

Classification of mechanisms, climatic context, areal scaling, and synchronization of floods: the hydroclimatology of floods in the Upper Paraná River basin, Brazil

Science.gov (United States)

Lima, Carlos H. R.; AghaKouchak, Amir; Lall, Upmanu

2017-12-01

Floods are the main natural disaster in Brazil, causing substantial economic damage and loss of life. Studies suggest that some extreme floods result from a causal climate chain. Exceptional rain and floods are determined by large-scale anomalies and persistent patterns in the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, which influence the magnitude, extent, and duration of these extremes. Moreover, floods can result from different generating mechanisms. These factors contradict the assumptions of homogeneity, and often stationarity, in flood frequency analysis. Here we outline a methodological framework based on clustering using self-organizing maps (SOMs) that allows the linkage of large-scale processes to local-scale observations. The methodology is applied to flood data from several sites in the flood-prone Upper Paraná River basin (UPRB) in southern Brazil. The SOM clustering approach is employed to classify the 6-day rainfall field over the UPRB into four categories, which are then used to classify floods into four types based on the spatiotemporal dynamics of the rainfall field prior to the observed flood events. An analysis of the vertically integrated moisture fluxes, vorticity, and high-level atmospheric circulation revealed that these four clusters are related to known tropical and extratropical processes, including the South American low-level jet (SALLJ); extratropical cyclones; and the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ). Persistent anomalies in the sea surface temperature fields in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are also found to be associated with these processes. Floods associated with each cluster present different patterns in terms of frequency, magnitude, spatial variability, scaling, and synchronization of events across the sites and subbasins. These insights suggest new directions for flood risk assessment, forecasting, and management.

Real Time Estimation of the Calgary Floods Using Limited Remote Sensing Data

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Emily Schnebele

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Every year, flood disasters are responsible for widespread destruction and loss of human life. Remote sensing data are capable of providing valuable, synoptic coverage of flood events but are not always available because of satellite revisit limitations, obstructions from cloud cover or vegetation canopy, or expense. In addition, knowledge of road accessibility is imperative during all phases of a flood event. In June 2013, the City of Calgary experienced sudden and extensive flooding but lacked comprehensive remote sensing coverage. Using this event as a case study, this work illustrates how data from non-authoritative sources are used to augment traditional data and methods to estimate flood extent and identify affected roads during a flood disaster. The application of these data, which may have varying resolutions and uncertainities, provide an estimation of flood extent when traditional data and methods are lacking or incomplete. When flooding occurs over multiple days, it is possible to construct an estimate of the advancement and recession of the flood event. Non-authoritative sources also provide flood information at the micro-level, which can be difficult to capture from remote sensing data; however, the distibution and quantity of data collected from these sources will affect the quality of the flood estimations.

Flood Extent Mapping for Namibia Using Change Detection and Thresholding with SAR

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Long, Stephanie; Fatoyinbo, Temilola E.; Policelli, Frederick

2014-01-01

A new method for flood detection change detection and thresholding (CDAT) was used with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery to delineate the extent of flooding for the Chobe floodplain in the Caprivi region of Namibia. This region experiences annual seasonal flooding and has seen a recent renewal of severe flooding after a long dry period in the 1990s. Flooding in this area has caused loss of life and livelihoods for the surrounding communities and has caught the attention of disaster relief agencies. There is a need for flood extent mapping techniques that can be used to process images quickly, providing near real-time flooding information to relief agencies. ENVISAT/ASAR and Radarsat-2 images were acquired for several flooding seasons from February 2008 to March 2013. The CDAT method was used to determine flooding from these images and includes the use of image subtraction, decision based classification with threshold values, and segmentation of SAR images. The total extent of flooding determined for 2009, 2011 and 2012 was about 542 km2, 720 km2, and 673 km2 respectively. Pixels determined to be flooded in vegetation were typically flooding in vegetation was much greater (almost one third of the total flooded area). The time to maximum flooding for the 2013 flood season was determined to be about 27 days. Landsat water classification was used to compare the results from the new CDAT with SAR method; the results show good spatial agreement with Landsat scenes.

Temporal clustering of floods in Germany: Do flood-rich and flood-poor periods exist?

Science.gov (United States)

Merz, Bruno; Nguyen, Viet Dung; Vorogushyn, Sergiy

2016-10-01

The repeated occurrence of exceptional floods within a few years, such as the Rhine floods in 1993 and 1995 and the Elbe and Danube floods in 2002 and 2013, suggests that floods in Central Europe may be organized in flood-rich and flood-poor periods. This hypothesis is studied by testing the significance of temporal clustering in flood occurrence (peak-over-threshold) time series for 68 catchments across Germany for the period 1932-2005. To assess the robustness of the results, different methods are used: Firstly, the index of dispersion, which quantifies the departure from a homogeneous Poisson process, is investigated. Further, the time-variation of the flood occurrence rate is derived by non-parametric kernel implementation and the significance of clustering is evaluated via parametric and non-parametric tests. Although the methods give consistent overall results, the specific results differ considerably. Hence, we recommend applying different methods when investigating flood clustering. For flood estimation and risk management, it is of relevance to understand whether clustering changes with flood severity and time scale. To this end, clustering is assessed for different thresholds and time scales. It is found that the majority of catchments show temporal clustering at the 5% significance level for low thresholds and time scales of one to a few years. However, clustering decreases substantially with increasing threshold and time scale. We hypothesize that flood clustering in Germany is mainly caused by catchment memory effects along with intra- to inter-annual climate variability, and that decadal climate variability plays a minor role.

44 CFR 201.3 - Responsibilities.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... receive the reduced cost share for the Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) and Severe Repetitive Loss (SRL... HOMELAND SECURITY DISASTER ASSISTANCE MITIGATION PLANNING § 201.3 Responsibilities. (a) General. This... Administrator are to: (1) Oversee all FEMA related pre- and post-disaster hazard mitigation programs and...

The Importance of Studying Past Extreme Floods to Prepare for Uncertain Future Extremes

Science.gov (United States)

Burges, S. J.

2016-12-01

Hoyt and Langbein, 1955 in their book `Floods' wrote: " ..meteorologic and hydrologic conditions will combine to produce superfloods of unprecedented magnitude. We have every reason to believe that in most rivers past floods may not be an accurate measure of ultimate flood potentialities. It is this superflood with which we are always most concerned". I provide several examples to offer some historical perspective on assessing extreme floods. In one example, flooding in the Miami Valley, OH in 1913 claimed 350 lives. The engineering and socio-economic challenges facing the Morgan Engineering Co in how to mitigate against future flood damage and loss of life when limited information was available provide guidance about ways to face an uncertain hydroclimate future, particularly one of a changed climate. A second example forces us to examine mixed flood populations and illustrates the huge uncertainty in assigning flood magnitude and exceedance probability to extreme floods in such cases. There is large uncertainty in flood frequency estimates; knowledge of the total flood hydrograph, not the peak flood flow rate alone, is what is needed for hazard mitigation assessment or design. Some challenges in estimating the complete flood hydrograph in an uncertain future climate, including demands on hydrologic models and their inputs, are addressed.

Incorporating seepage losses into a 1D unsteady model of floods in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Zangemar River is an ephemeral river located in the northwestern part of Iran. Maku and Poldasht are hydrometric stations located upstream and downstream of Zangemar River, respectively. The measured flood hydrograph indicates that the output hydrograph volume from Poldasht station is significantly less than the input ...

Repetitive Questioning Exasperates Caregivers

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R. C. Hamdy MD

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Repetitive questioning is due to an impaired episodic memory and is a frequent, often presenting, problem in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (amnestic type. It is due to the patients’ difficulties learning new information, retaining it, and recalling it, and is often aggravated by a poor attention span and easy distractibility. A number of factors may trigger and maintain repetitive questioning. Caregivers should try to identify and address these triggers. In the case discussion presented, it is due to the patient’s concerns about her and her family’s safety triggered by watching a particularly violent movie aired on TV. What went wrong in the patient/caregiver interaction and how it could have been avoided or averted are explored. Also reviewed are the impact of repetitive questioning, the challenges it raises for caregivers, and some effective intervention strategies that may be useful to diffuse the angst that caregivers experience with repetitive questioning.

Involvement of Disperse Repetitive Sequences in Wheat/Rye Genome Adjustment

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Manuela Silva

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The union of different genomes in the same nucleus frequently results in hybrid genotypes with improved genome plasticity related to both genome remodeling events and changes in gene expression. Most modern cereal crops are polyploid species. Triticale, synthesized by the cross between wheat and rye, constitutes an excellent model to study polyploidization functional implications. We intend to attain a deeper knowledge of dispersed repetitive sequence involvement in parental genome reshuffle in triticale and in wheat-rye addition lines that have the entire wheat genome plus each rye chromosome pair. Through Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD analysis with OPH20 10-mer primer we unraveled clear alterations corresponding to the loss of specific bands from both parental genomes. Moreover, the sequential nature of those events was revealed by the increased absence of rye-origin bands in wheat-rye addition lines in comparison with triticale. Remodeled band sequencing revealed that both repetitive and coding genome domains are affected in wheat-rye hybrid genotypes. Additionally, the amplification and sequencing of pSc20H internal segments showed that the disappearance of parental bands may result from restricted sequence alterations and unraveled the involvement of wheat/rye related repetitive sequences in genome adjustment needed for hybrid plant stabilization.

Making Supply Chains Resilient to Floods Using a Bayesian Network

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Haraguchi, M.

2015-12-01

Natural hazards distress the global economy by disrupting the interconnected supply chain networks. Manufacturing companies have created cost-efficient supply chains by reducing inventories, streamlining logistics and limiting the number of suppliers. As a result, today's supply chains are profoundly susceptible to systemic risks. In Thailand, for example, the GDP growth rate declined by 76 % in 2011 due to prolonged flooding. Thailand incurred economic damage including the loss of USD 46.5 billion, approximately 70% of which was caused by major supply chain disruptions in the manufacturing sector. Similar problems occurred after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, the Mississippi River floods and droughts during 2011 - 2013, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. This study proposes a methodology for modeling supply chain disruptions using a Bayesian network analysis (BNA) to estimate expected values of countermeasures of floods, such as inventory management, supplier management and hard infrastructure management. We first performed a spatio-temporal correlation analysis between floods and extreme precipitation data for the last 100 years at a global scale. Then we used a BNA to create synthetic networks that include variables associated with the magnitude and duration of floods, major components of supply chains and market demands. We also included decision variables of countermeasures that would mitigate potential losses caused by supply chain disruptions. Finally, we conducted a cost-benefit analysis by estimating the expected values of these potential countermeasures while conducting a sensitivity analysis. The methodology was applied to supply chain disruptions caused by the 2011 Thailand floods. Our study demonstrates desirable typical data requirements for the analysis, such as anonymized supplier network data (i.e. critical dependencies, vulnerability information of suppliers) and sourcing data(i.e. locations of suppliers, and production rates and

Estimates of Present and Future Flood Risk in the Conterminous United States

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Wing, O.; Bates, P. D.; Smith, A.; Sampson, C. C.; Johnson, K.; Fargione, J.; Morefield, P.

2017-12-01

Past attempts to estimate flood risk across the USA either have incomplete coverage, coarse resolution or use overly simplified models of the flooding process. In this paper, we use a new 30m resolution model of the entire conterminous US (CONUS) with realistic flood physics to produce estimates of flood hazard which match to within 90% accuracy the skill of local models built with detailed data. Socio-economic data of commensurate resolution are combined with these flood depths to estimate current and future flood risk. Future population and land-use projections from the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) are employed to indicate how flood risk might change through the 21st Century, while present-day estimates utilize the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Structure Inventory and a USEPA map of population distribution. Our data show that the total CONUS population currently exposed to serious flooding is 2.6 to 3.1 times higher than previous estimates; with nearly 41 million Americans living within the so-called 1 in 100-year (1% annual probability) floodplain, compared to only 13 million according to FEMA flood maps. Moreover, socio-economic change alone leads to significant future increases in flood exposure and risk, even before climate change impacts are accounted for. The share of the population living on the 1 in 100-year floodplain is projected to increase from 13.3% in the present-day to 15.6 - 15.8% in 2050 and 16.4 - 16.8% in 2100. The area of developed land within this floodplain, currently at 150,000 km2, is likely to increase by 37 - 72% in 2100 based on the scenarios selected. 5.5 trillion worth of assets currently lie on the 1% floodplain; we project that by 2100 this number will exceed 10 trillion. With this detailed spatial information on present-day flood risk, federal and state agencies can take appropriate action to mitigate losses. Use of USEPA population and land-use projections mean that particular attention can be

A Multi-Faceted Debris-Flood Hazard Assessment for Cougar Creek, Alberta, Canada

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Matthias Jakob

2017-01-01

the latter. A reasonable match was accomplished, verifying the overall relationship. The findings from this work were later used as input to a risk assessment seeking to quantify risk to loss of life and economic losses. The risk assessment then formed the basis for design of debris-flood mitigation structures.

Computer-Related Repetitive Stress Injuries

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... Staying Safe Videos for Educators Search English Español Computer-Related Repetitive Stress Injuries KidsHealth / For Parents / Computer-Related Repetitive Stress Injuries What's in this article? ...

Flood Damage Assessment in Pearl River Delta Rural Area Application in Huashan Town, Huadu District,Guanghzou during the 2017 5.7 Heavy Rain Storm

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, X.

2017-12-01

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China, the summer rain storm occurs frequently, the flood damage is very serious. Damage assessment is the basis of scientific decision-making in disaster mitigation. All approaches of flood damage analysis contain uncertainties due to the inaccuracies and generalisations used, the lack of data aggravates this problem, making methods very rough. This study presents a detailed flood damage assessment framework in Pearl River Delta rural area, using 2017 "5.7" heavy rain storm event to simulate the process and estimate the flood loss in resident building and property, agriculture production. The framework integrates four modules,1) utilize the remote sensing and statistical yearbook and so on to construct the disaster bearing bodies GIS database; 2) using hydraulics model to simulate the flood extent and depth spatial distribution;3)through field investigation to obtain the flood loss data for all kinds of hazard-affected body, using statistical analysis method to get the damage curves;4)Integrate flood scenarios, disaster bearing bodies GIS database and damage curves to calculate the flood loss estimation value. Using this methodology, in the 2017 "5.7" heavy rain storm event, Huashan Town flood damage loss is underestimate compared with the government report, because of not considering the damage of water conservancy facilities. But the disaster loss value on the spatial distribution is consistent with actual situation. In terms of aggregated values in the whole town, the model is capable of obtaining figures that are within the same order of magnitude. This study produce a flood damage assessment framework taking into account the regional characteristics of PRD rural area, provide a template for future practice. This study only considers the current impacts, the framework should be improved by taking into account socio-economic and climatic changes, as well as implementing adaptation measures to be applied to assess the potential

Current and future flood risk to railway infrastructure in Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Bubeck, Philip; Kellermann, Patric; Alfieri, Lorenzo; Feyen, Luc; Dillenardt, Lisa; Thieken, Annegret H.

2017-04-01

Railway infrastructure plays an important role in the transportation of freight and passengers across the European Union. According to Eurostat, more than four billion passenger-kilometres were travelled on national and international railway lines of the EU28 in 2014. To further strengthen transport infrastructure in Europe, the European Commission will invest another € 24.05 billion in the transnational transport network until 2020 as part of its new transport infrastructure policy (TEN-T), including railway infrastructure. Floods pose a significant risk to infrastructure elements. Damage data of recent flood events in Europe show that infrastructure losses can make up a considerable share of overall losses. For example, damage to state and municipal infrastructure in the federal state of Saxony (Germany) accounted for nearly 60% of overall losses during the large-scale event in June 2013. Especially in mountainous areas with little usable space available, roads and railway lines often follow floodplains or are located along steep and unsteady slopes. In Austria, for instance, the flood of 2013 caused € 75 million of direct damage to railway infrastructure. Despite the importance of railway infrastructure and its exposure to flooding, assessments of potential damage and risk (i.e. probability * damage) are still in its infancy compared with other sectors, such as the residential or industrial sector. Infrastructure-specific assessments at the regional scale are largely lacking. Regional assessment of potential damage to railway infrastructure has been hampered by a lack of infrastructure-specific damage models and data availability. The few available regional approaches have used damage models that assess damage to various infrastructure elements (e.g. roads, railway, airports and harbours) using one aggregated damage function and cost estimate. Moreover, infrastructure elements are often considerably underrepresented in regional land cover data, such as

The role of short-term memory impairment in nonword repetition, real word repetition, and nonword decoding: A case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Peter, Beate

2018-01-01

In a companion study, adults with dyslexia and adults with a probable history of childhood apraxia of speech showed evidence of difficulty with processing sequential information during nonword repetition, multisyllabic real word repetition and nonword decoding. Results suggested that some errors arose in visual encoding during nonword reading, all levels of processing but especially short-term memory storage/retrieval during nonword repetition, and motor planning and programming during complex real word repetition. To further investigate the role of short-term memory, a participant with short-term memory impairment (MI) was recruited. MI was confirmed with poor performance during a sentence repetition and three nonword repetition tasks, all of which have a high short-term memory load, whereas typical performance was observed during tests of reading, spelling, and static verbal knowledge, all with low short-term memory loads. Experimental results show error-free performance during multisyllabic real word repetition but high counts of sequence errors, especially migrations and assimilations, during nonword repetition, supporting short-term memory as a locus of sequential processing deficit during nonword repetition. Results are also consistent with the hypothesis that during complex real word repetition, short-term memory is bypassed as the word is recognized and retrieved from long-term memory prior to producing the word.

Flood Hazard Mapping by Using Geographic Information System and Hydraulic Model: Mert River, Samsun, Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vahdettin Demir

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this study, flood hazard maps were prepared for the Mert River Basin, Samsun, Turkey, by using GIS and Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System (HEC-RAS. In this river basin, human life losses and a significant amount of property damages were experienced in 2012 flood. The preparation of flood risk maps employed in the study includes the following steps: (1 digitization of topographical data and preparation of digital elevation model using ArcGIS, (2 simulation of flood lows of different return periods using a hydraulic model (HEC-RAS, and (3 preparation of flood risk maps by integrating the results of (1 and (2.

Flood risk management in Italy: challenges and opportunities for the implementation of the EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC)

Science.gov (United States)

Mysiak, J.; Testella, F.; Bonaiuto, M.; Carrus, G.; De Dominicis, S.; Ganucci Cancellieri, U.; Firus, K.; Grifoni, P.

2013-11-01

Italy's recent history is punctuated with devastating flood disasters claiming high death toll and causing vast but underestimated economic, social and environmental damage. The responses to major flood and landslide disasters such as the Polesine (1951), Vajont (1963), Firenze (1966), Valtelina (1987), Piedmont (1994), Crotone (1996), Sarno (1998), Soverato (2000), and Piedmont (2000) events have contributed to shaping the country's flood risk governance. Insufficient resources and capacity, slow implementation of the (at that time) novel risk prevention and protection framework, embodied in the law 183/89 of 18 May 1989, increased the reliance on the response and recovery operations of the civil protection. As a result, the importance of the Civil Protection Mechanism and the relative body of norms and regulation developed rapidly in the 1990s. In the aftermath of the Sarno (1998) and Soverato (2000) disasters, the Department for Civil Protection (DCP) installed a network of advanced early warning and alerting centres, the cornerstones of Italy's preparedness for natural hazards and a best practice worth following. However, deep convective clouds, not uncommon in Italy, producing intense rainfall and rapidly developing localised floods still lead to considerable damage and loss of life that can only be reduced by stepping up the risk prevention efforts. The implementation of the EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC) provides an opportunity to revise the model of flood risk governance and confront the shortcomings encountered during more than 20 yr of organised flood risk management. This brief communication offers joint recommendations towards this end from three projects funded by the 2nd CRUE ERA-NET (http://www.crue-eranet.net/) Funding Initiative: FREEMAN, IMRA and URFlood.

An early warning system for flash floods in hyper-arid Egypt

Science.gov (United States)

Cools, J.; Vanderkimpen, P.; El Afandi, G.; Abdelkhalek, A.; Fockedey, S.; El Sammany, M.; Abdallah, G.; El Bihery, M.; Bauwens, W.; Huygens, M.

2012-02-01

An early warning system (EWS) for flash floods has been developed for part of the Sinai peninsula of Egypt, an hyper-arid area confronted with limited availability of field data, limited understanding of the response of the wadi to rainfall, and a lack of correspondence between rainfall data and observed flash flood events. This paper shows that an EWS is not a "mission impossible" when confronted with large technical and scientific uncertainties and limited data availability. Firstly, the EWS has been developed and tested based on the best available information, this being quantitative data (field measurements, simulations and remote sensing images) complemented with qualitative "expert opinion" and local stakeholders' knowledge. Secondly, a set of essential parameters has been identified to be estimated or measured under data-poor conditions. These are: (1) an inventory of past significant rainfall and flash flood events, (2) the spatial and temporal distribution of the rainfall events and (3) transmission and infiltration losses and (4) thresholds for issuing warnings. Over a period of 30 yr (1979-2010), only 20 significant rain events have been measured. Nine of these resulted in a flash flood. Five flash floods were caused by regional storms and four by local convective storms. The results for the 2010 flash flood show that 90% of the total rainfall volume was lost to infiltration and transmission losses. Finally, it is discussed that the effectiveness of an EWS is only partially determined by technological performance. A strong institutional capacity is equally important, especially skilled staff to operate and maintain the system and clear communication pathways and emergency procedures in case of an upcoming disaster.

Increasing flood exposure in the Netherlands: implications for risk financing

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, B.; Koks, E. E.; Husby, T. G.; Ward, P. J.

2014-05-01

The effectiveness of disaster risk management and financing mechanisms depends on an accurate assessment of current and future hazard exposure. The increasing availability of detailed data offers policy makers and the insurance sector new opportunities to understand trends in risk, and to make informed decisions on ways to deal with these trends. In this paper we show how comprehensive property level information can be used for the assessment of exposure to flooding on a national scale, and how this information provides valuable input to discussions on possible risk financing practices. The case study used is the Netherlands, which is one of the countries most exposed to flooding globally, and which is currently undergoing a debate on strategies for the compensation of potential losses. Our results show that flood exposure has increased rapidly between 1960 and 2012, and that the growth of the building stock and its economic value in flood-prone areas has been higher than in non-flood-prone areas. We also find that property values in flood-prone areas are lower than those in non-flood-prone areas. We argue that the increase in the share of economic value located in potential flood-prone areas can have a negative effect on the feasibility of private insurance schemes in the Netherlands. The methodologies and results presented in this study are relevant for many regions around the world where the effects of rising flood exposure create a challenge for risk financing.

Phosphate release upon short- and long-term flooding of fen meadows depends on land use history and pH.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beltman, Boudewijn; van der Ven, P.J.M.; Verhoeven, Jos; Sarneel, J

2014-01-01

Flooding of acidified and desiccated fen meadows is a management approach for mitigating loss of plant species as well as a short-term measure to prevent flooding in urban areas. Studies have shown that flooding events can cause extreme P release from soils. We questioned whether the occurrence of

Modeling of Flood Risk for the Continental United States

Science.gov (United States)

Lohmann, D.; Li, S.; Katz, B.; Goteti, G.; Kaheil, Y. H.; Vojjala, R.

2011-12-01

the flood hazard model is used to drive a flood loss model that is coupled to a financial model.

Floods of December 1964 and January 1965 in the Far Western States; Part 1 Description

Science.gov (United States)

Waananen, A.O.; Harris, D.D.; Williams, R.C.

1971-01-01

The floods of December 1964 and January 1965 in the Far Western States were extreme; in many areas, the greatest in the history of recorded streamflow and substantially greater than those of December 1955. An unusually large area--Oregon, most of Idaho, northern California, southern Washington, and small areas in western and northern Nevada--was involved. It exceeded the area flooded in 1955. Outstanding features included recordbreaking peak discharges, high sediment concentrations, large sediment loads, and extensive flood damage. The loss of 47 lives and direct property damage of more than $430 million was attributable to the floods. Yet, storage in reservoirs and operation of flood-control facilities were effective in preventing far greater damages in many areas, particularly in the Central Valley in California and the Willamette River basin in Oregon. The floods were caused by three principal storms during the period December 19 to January 31. The December 19-23 storm was the greatest in overall intensity and areal extent. Crests occurred on many major streams December 23, 1964, 9 years to the day after the great flood of December 23, 1955. The January 2-7 storm produced extreme floods in some basins in California. The January 21-31 storm produced maximum stages in some streams in northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington and a repetition of high flows in part of the Willamette River basin and in some basins in coastal Oregon. All the storms, and particularly the warm torrential rain December 21-23, reflected the combined effect of moist unstable airmasses, strong west-southwest winds, and mountain ranges oriented nearly at right angles to the flow of air. High air temperatures and strong winds associated with the storms caused melting of snow, and the meltwater augmented the rain that fell on frozen ground. The coastal areas of northern California and southern Oregon had measurable rain on as many as 50 days in December and January. A maximum

Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters in Megacities: The Case of Floods in São Paulo, Brazil

OpenAIRE

Haddad, Eduardo; Teixeira, Eliane

2013-01-01

The city of São Paulo, home to 11 million people, suffers constantly the effects of flooding caused by extreme precipitation. Localized floods occur every summer in various parts of the city. Besides the losses and inconvenience felt by the residents, floods produce damages that cross the city boundaries, affecting income and output in the metropolitan area as well as in other parts of the state and the country. The objective of this study is to evaluate the economic impacts of floods in the ...

On identifying relationships between the flood scaling exponent and basin attributes.

Science.gov (United States)

Medhi, Hemanta; Tripathi, Shivam

2015-07-01

Floods are known to exhibit self-similarity and follow scaling laws that form the basis of regional flood frequency analysis. However, the relationship between basin attributes and the scaling behavior of floods is still not fully understood. Identifying these relationships is essential for drawing connections between hydrological processes in a basin and the flood response of the basin. The existing studies mostly rely on simulation models to draw these connections. This paper proposes a new methodology that draws connections between basin attributes and the flood scaling exponents by using observed data. In the proposed methodology, region-of-influence approach is used to delineate homogeneous regions for each gaging station. Ordinary least squares regression is then applied to estimate flood scaling exponents for each homogeneous region, and finally stepwise regression is used to identify basin attributes that affect flood scaling exponents. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is tested by applying it to data from river basins in the United States. The results suggest that flood scaling exponent is small for regions having (i) large abstractions from precipitation in the form of large soil moisture storages and high evapotranspiration losses, and (ii) large fractions of overland flow compared to base flow, i.e., regions having fast-responding basins. Analysis of simple scaling and multiscaling of floods showed evidence of simple scaling for regions in which the snowfall dominates the total precipitation.

Modelling Inland Flood Events for Hazard Maps in Taiwan

Science.gov (United States)

Ghosh, S.; Nzerem, K.; Sassi, M.; Hilberts, A.; Assteerawatt, A.; Tillmanns, S.; Mathur, P.; Mitas, C.; Rafique, F.

2015-12-01

Taiwan experiences significant inland flooding, driven by torrential rainfall from plum rain storms and typhoons during summer and fall. From last 13 to 16 years data, 3,000 buildings were damaged by such floods annually with a loss US$0.41 billion (Water Resources Agency). This long, narrow island nation with mostly hilly/mountainous topography is located at tropical-subtropical zone with annual average typhoon-hit-frequency of 3-4 (Central Weather Bureau) and annual average precipitation of 2502mm (WRA) - 2.5 times of the world's average. Spatial and temporal distributions of countrywide precipitation are uneven, with very high local extreme rainfall intensities. Annual average precipitation is 3000-5000mm in the mountainous regions, 78% of it falls in May-October, and the 1-hour to 3-day maximum rainfall are about 85 to 93% of the world records (WRA). Rivers in Taiwan are short with small upstream areas and high runoff coefficients of watersheds. These rivers have the steepest slopes, the shortest response time with rapid flows, and the largest peak flows as well as specific flood peak discharge (WRA) in the world. RMS has recently developed a countrywide inland flood model for Taiwan, producing hazard return period maps at 1arcsec grid resolution. These can be the basis for evaluating and managing flood risk, its economic impacts, and insured flood losses. The model is initiated with sub-daily historical meteorological forcings and calibrated to daily discharge observations at about 50 river gauges over the period 2003-2013. Simulations of hydrologic processes, via rainfall-runoff and routing models, are subsequently performed based on a 10000 year set of stochastic forcing. The rainfall-runoff model is physically based continuous, semi-distributed model for catchment hydrology. The 1-D wave propagation hydraulic model considers catchment runoff in routing and describes large-scale transport processes along the river. It also accounts for reservoir storage

Synergy Repetition Training versus Task Repetition Training in Acquiring New Skill.

Science.gov (United States)

Patel, Vrajeshri; Craig, Jamie; Schumacher, Michelle; Burns, Martin K; Florescu, Ionut; Vinjamuri, Ramana

2017-01-01

Traditionally, repetitive practice of a task is used to learn a new skill, exhibiting as immediately improved performance. Research suggests, however, that a more experience-based rather than exposure-based training protocol may allow for better transference of the skill to related tasks. In synergy-based motor control theory, fundamental motor skills, such as hand grasping, are represented with a synergy subspace that captures essential motor patterns. In this study, we propose that motor-skill learning through synergy-based mechanisms may provide advantages over traditional task repetition learning. A new task was designed to highlight the range of motion and dexterity of the human hand. Two separate training strategies were tested in healthy subjects: task repetition training and synergy training versus a control. All three groups showed improvements when retested on the same task. When tested on a similar, but different set of tasks, only the synergy group showed improvements in accuracy (9.27% increase) compared to the repetition (3.24% decline) and control (3.22% decline) groups. A kinematic analysis revealed that although joint angular peak velocities decreased, timing benefits stemmed from the initial feed-forward portion of the task (reaction time). Accuracy improvements may have derived from general improved coordination among the four involved fingers. These preliminary results warrant further investigation of synergy-based motor training in healthy individuals, as well as in individuals undergoing hand-based rehabilitative therapy.

Analysis of flood vulnerability in urban area; a case study in deli watershed

Science.gov (United States)

Indrawan, I.; Siregar, R. I.

2018-03-01

Based on the National Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia, the distribution of disasters and victims died until the year 2016 is the largest flood disaster. Deli River is a river that has the greatest flood potential through Medan City. In Deli Watershed, flow discharge affected by the discharge from its tributaries, the high rainfall intensity and human activity. We should anticipate reducing and preventing the occurrence of losses due to flood damage. One of the ways to anticipate flood disaster is to predict which part of urban area is would flood. The objective of this study is to analyze the flood inundation areas due to overflow of Deli River through Medan city. Two-dimensional modeling by HEC-RAS 5.0.3 is a widely used hydraulic software tool developed by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, which combined with the HEC-HMS for hydrological modeling. The result shows flood vulnerability in Medan by a map to present the spot that vulnerable about flood. The flooded area due to the overflowing of Deli River consists of seven sub districts, namely Medan Johor, Medan Selayang, Medan Kota, Medan Petisah, Medan Maimun, Medan Perjuangan and Medan Barat.

Nuclear reactor equipped with a flooding tank and a residual heat removal and emergency cooling system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schabert, H.P.; Winkler, F.

1975-01-01

A description is given of a nuclear reactor such as a pressurized-water reactor or the like which is equipped with a flooding tank and a residual heat removal and emergency cooling system. The flooding tank is arranged within the containment shell at an elevation above the upper edge of the reactor core and contains a liquid for flooding the reactor core in the event of a loss of coolant

Flood Impacts on People: from Hazard to Risk Maps

Science.gov (United States)

Arrighi, C.; Castelli, F.

2017-12-01

The mitigation of adverse consequences of floods on people is crucial for civil protection and public authorities. According to several studies, in the developed countries the majority of flood-related fatalities occurs due to inappropriate high risk behaviours such as driving and walking in floodwaters. In this work both the loss of stability of vehicles and pedestrians in floodwaters are analysed. Flood hazard is evaluated, based on (i) a 2D inundation model of an urban area, (ii) 3D hydrodynamic simulations of water flows around vehicles and human body and (iii) a dimensional analysis of experimental activity. Exposure and vulnerability of vehicles and population are assessed exploiting several sources of open GIS data in order to produce risk maps for a testing case study. The results show that a significant hazard to vehicles and pedestrians exists in the study area. Particularly high is the hazard to vehicles, which are likely to be swept away by flood flow, possibly aggravate damages to structures and infrastructures and locally alter the flood propagation. Exposure and vulnerability analysis identifies some structures such as schools and public facilities, which may attract several people. Moreover, some shopping facilities in the area, which attract both vehicular and pedestrians' circulation are located in the highest flood hazard zone.The application of the method demonstrates that, at municipal level, such risk maps can support civil defence strategies and education to active citizenship, thus contributing to flood impact reduction to population.

Building regional early flood warning systems by AI techniques

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, F. J.; Chang, L. C.; Amin, M. Z. B. M.

2017-12-01

Building early flood warning system is essential for the protection of the residents against flood hazards and make actions to mitigate the losses. This study implements AI technology for forecasting multi-step-ahead regional flood inundation maps during storm events. The methodology includes three major schemes: (1) configuring the self-organizing map (SOM) to categorize a large number of regional inundation maps into a meaningful topology; (2) building dynamic neural networks to forecast multi-step-ahead average inundated depths (AID); and (3) adjusting the weights of the selected neuron in the constructed SOM based on the forecasted AID to obtain real-time regional inundation maps. The proposed models are trained, and tested based on a large number of inundation data sets collected in regions with the most frequent and serious flooding in the river basin. The results appear that the SOM topological relationships between individual neurons and their neighbouring neurons are visible and clearly distinguishable, and the hybrid model can continuously provide multistep-ahead visible regional inundation maps with high resolution during storm events, which have relatively small RMSE values and high R2 as compared with numerical simulation data sets. The computing time is only few seconds, and thereby leads to real-time regional flood inundation forecasting and make early flood inundation warning system. We demonstrate that the proposed hybrid ANN-based model has a robust and reliable predictive ability and can be used for early warning to mitigate flood disasters.

Usefulness and limitations of global flood risk models

Science.gov (United States)

Ward, Philip; Jongman, Brenden; Salamon, Peter; Simpson, Alanna; Bates, Paul; De Groeve, Tom; Muis, Sanne; Coughlan de Perez, Erin; Rudari, Roberto; Mark, Trigg; Winsemius, Hessel

2016-04-01

Global flood risk models are now a reality. Initially, their development was driven by a demand from users for first-order global assessments to identify risk hotspots. Relentless upward trends in flood damage over the last decade have enhanced interest in such assessments. The adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts have made these efforts even more essential. As a result, global flood risk models are being used more and more in practice, by an increasingly large number of practitioners and decision-makers. However, they clearly have their limits compared to local models. To address these issues, a team of scientists and practitioners recently came together at the Global Flood Partnership meeting to critically assess the question 'What can('t) we do with global flood risk models?'. The results of this dialogue (Ward et al., 2013) will be presented, opening a discussion on similar broader initiatives at the science-policy interface in other natural hazards. In this contribution, examples are provided of successful applications of global flood risk models in practice (for example together with the World Bank, Red Cross, and UNISDR), and limitations and gaps between user 'wish-lists' and model capabilities are discussed. Finally, a research agenda is presented for addressing these limitations and reducing the gaps. Ward et al., 2015. Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate2742

Extent and frequency of floods on Delaware River in vicinity of Belvidere, New Jersey

Science.gov (United States)

Farlekas, George M.

1966-01-01

A stream overflowing its banks is a natural phenomenon. This natural phenomenon of flooding has occurred on the Delaware River in the past and will occur in the future. T' o resulting inundation of large areas can cause property damage, business losses and possible loss of life, and may result in emergency costs for protection, rescue, and salvage work. For optimum development of the river valley consistent with the flood risk, an evaluation of flood conditions is necessary. Basic data and the interpretation of the data on the regimen of the streams, particularly the magnitude of floods to be expected, the frequency of their occurrence, and the areas inundated, are essential for planning and development of flood-prone areas.This report presents information relative to the extent, depth, and frequency of floods on the Delaware River and its tributaries in the vicinity of Belvidere, N.J. Flooding on the tributaries detailed in the report pertains only to the effect of backwater from the Delaware River. Data are presented for several past floods with emphasis given to the floods of August 19, 1955 and May 24, 1942. In addition, information is given for a hypothetical flood based on the flood of August 19, 1955 modified by completed (since 1955) and planned flood-control works.By use of relations presented in this report the extent, depth, and frequency of flooding can be estimated for any site along the reach of the Delaware River under study. Flood data and the evaluation of the data are presented so that local and regional agencies, organizations, and individuals may have a technical basis for making decisions on the use of flood-prone areas. The Delaware River Basin Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey regard this program of flood-plain inundation studies as a positive step toward flood-damage prevention. Flood-plain inundation studies, when followed by appropriate land-use regulations, are a valuable and economical supplement to physical works for flood

Phosphate Release Upon Long- and Short -Term Flooding of Fen Meadows Depends on Land Use History and Soil pH

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beltman, B.; Van Der Ven, P. J. M.; Verhoeven, J. T. A.; Sarneel, J. M.

2014-01-01

Flooding of acidified and desiccated fen meadows is a management approach for mitigating loss of plant species as well as a short-term measure to prevent flooding in urban areas. Studies have shown that flooding events can cause extreme P release from soils. We questioned whether the occurrence of

Flood extent mapping for Namibia using change detection and thresholding with SAR

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Long, Stephanie; Fatoyinbo, Temilola E; Policelli, Frederick

2014-01-01

A new method for flood detection change detection and thresholding (CDAT) was used with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery to delineate the extent of flooding for the Chobe floodplain in the Caprivi region of Namibia. This region experiences annual seasonal flooding and has seen a recent renewal of severe flooding after a long dry period in the 1990s. Flooding in this area has caused loss of life and livelihoods for the surrounding communities and has caught the attention of disaster relief agencies. There is a need for flood extent mapping techniques that can be used to process images quickly, providing near real-time flooding information to relief agencies. ENVISAT/ASAR and Radarsat-2 images were acquired for several flooding seasons from February 2008 to March 2013. The CDAT method was used to determine flooding from these images and includes the use of image subtraction, decision-based classification with threshold values, and segmentation of SAR images. The total extent of flooding determined for 2009, 2011 and 2012 was about 542 km 2 , 720 km 2 , and 673 km 2 respectively. Pixels determined to be flooded in vegetation were typically <0.5% of the entire scene, with the exception of 2009 where the detection of flooding in vegetation was much greater (almost one third of the total flooded area). The time to maximum flooding for the 2013 flood season was determined to be about 27 days. Landsat water classification was used to compare the results from the new CDAT with SAR method; the results show good spatial agreement with Landsat scenes. (paper)

Development of an anti-flood board to protect the interiors and exteriors of the infrastructure

Science.gov (United States)

Petru, Michal; Srb, Pavel; Sevcik, Ladislav; Martinec, Tomas; Kulhavy, Petr

2018-06-01

This article deals with the development of an anti-flood board to protect the interior and exterior of various infrastructures, such a houses, cottages or industrial buildings. It was designed prototypes and assembled numerical simulations. In Central Europe and in particular in the Czech Republic, floods are an integral part of the natural water cycle and cause great loss of life and great property damage. The development of new types of mobile anti-flood boards is very important as the design solution is developed for flood protection with regard to minimizing weight, cost of production, easy manipulation, simplicity and speed of installation.

Dynamics of flood water infiltration and ground water recharge in hyperarid desert.

Science.gov (United States)

Dahan, Ofer; Tatarsky, Boaz; Enzel, Yehouda; Kulls, Christoph; Seely, Mary; Benito, Gererdo

2008-01-01

A study on flood water infiltration and ground water recharge of a shallow alluvial aquifer was conducted in the hyperarid section of the Kuiseb River, Namibia. The study site was selected to represent a typical desert ephemeral river. An instrumental setup allowed, for the first time, continuous monitoring of infiltration during a flood event through the channel bed and the entire vadose zone. The monitoring system included flexible time domain reflectometry probes that were designed to measure the temporal variation in vadose zone water content and instruments to concurrently measure the levels of flood and ground water. A sequence of five individual floods was monitored during the rainy season in early summer 2006. These newly generated data served to elucidate the dynamics of flood water infiltration. Each flood initiated an infiltration event which was expressed in wetting of the vadose zone followed by a measurable rise in the water table. The data enabled a direct calculation of the infiltration fluxes by various independent methods. The floods varied in their stages, peaks, and initial water contents. However, all floods produced very similar flux rates, suggesting that the recharge rates are less affected by the flood stages but rather controlled by flow duration and available aquifer storage under it. Large floods flood the stream channel terraces and promote the larger transmission losses. These, however, make only a negligible contribution to the recharge of the ground water. It is the flood duration within the active streambed, which may increase with flood magnitude that is important to the recharge process.

Mapping flood and flooding potential indices: a methodological approach to identifying areas susceptible to flood and flooding risk. Case study: the Prahova catchment (Romania)

Science.gov (United States)

Zaharia, Liliana; Costache, Romulus; Prăvălie, Remus; Ioana-Toroimac, Gabriela

2017-04-01

Given that floods continue to cause yearly significant worldwide human and material damages, flood risk mitigation is a key issue and a permanent challenge in developing policies and strategies at various spatial scales. Therefore, a basic phase is elaborating hazard and flood risk maps, documents which are an essential support for flood risk management. The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that allows for the identification of flash-flood and flood-prone susceptible areas based on computing and mapping of two indices: FFPI (Flash-Flood Potential Index) and FPI (Flooding Potential Index). These indices are obtained by integrating in a GIS environment several geographical variables which control runoff (in the case of the FFPI) and favour flooding (in the case of the FPI). The methodology was applied in the upper (mountainous) and middle (hilly) catchment of the Prahova River, a densely populated and socioeconomically well-developed area which has been affected repeatedly by water-related hazards over the past decades. The resulting maps showing the spatialization of the FFPI and FPI allow for the identification of areas with high susceptibility to flashfloods and flooding. This approach can provide useful mapped information, especially for areas (generally large) where there are no flood/hazard risk maps. Moreover, the FFPI and FPI maps can constitute a preliminary step for flood risk and vulnerability assessment.

Loss of variation of state detected in soybean metabolic and human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional networks under external stimuli

KAUST Repository

Sakata, Katsumi

2016-10-24

Soybean (Glycine max) is sensitive to flooding stress, and flood damage at the seedling stage is a barrier to growth. We constructed two mathematical models of the soybean metabolic network, a control model and a flooded model, from metabolic profiles in soybean plants. We simulated the metabolic profiles with perturbations before and after the flooding stimulus using the two models. We measured the variation of state that the system could maintain from a state–space description of the simulated profiles. The results showed a loss of variation of state during the flooding response in the soybean plants. Loss of variation of state was also observed in a human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional network in response to a phorbol-ester stimulus. Thus, we detected a loss of variation of state under external stimuli in two biological systems, regardless of the regulation and stimulus types. Our results suggest that a loss of robustness may occur concurrently with the loss of variation of state in biological systems. We describe the possible applications of the quantity of variation of state in plant genetic engineering and cell biology. Finally, we present a hypothetical “external stimulus-induced information loss” model of biological systems.

Loss of variation of state detected in soybean metabolic and human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional networks under external stimuli

KAUST Repository

Sakata, Katsumi; Saito, Toshiyuki; Ohyanagi, Hajime; Okumura, Jun; Ishige, Kentaro; Suzuki, Harukazu; Nakamura, Takuji; Komatsu, Setsuko

2016-01-01

Soybean (Glycine max) is sensitive to flooding stress, and flood damage at the seedling stage is a barrier to growth. We constructed two mathematical models of the soybean metabolic network, a control model and a flooded model, from metabolic profiles in soybean plants. We simulated the metabolic profiles with perturbations before and after the flooding stimulus using the two models. We measured the variation of state that the system could maintain from a state–space description of the simulated profiles. The results showed a loss of variation of state during the flooding response in the soybean plants. Loss of variation of state was also observed in a human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional network in response to a phorbol-ester stimulus. Thus, we detected a loss of variation of state under external stimuli in two biological systems, regardless of the regulation and stimulus types. Our results suggest that a loss of robustness may occur concurrently with the loss of variation of state in biological systems. We describe the possible applications of the quantity of variation of state in plant genetic engineering and cell biology. Finally, we present a hypothetical “external stimulus-induced information loss” model of biological systems.

How Flood Experience and Risk Perception Influences Protective Actions and Behaviours among Canadian Homeowners

Science.gov (United States)

Thistlethwaite, Jason; Henstra, Daniel; Brown, Craig; Scott, Daniel

2018-02-01

Canada is a country in the midst of a flood management policy transition that is shifting part of the flood damage burden from the state to homeowners. This transition—as well as the large financial losses resulting from flooding—have created a window of opportunity for Canada to implement strategies that increase property owners' capacity to avoid and absorb the financial and physical risks associated with flooding. This work presents foundational research into the extent to which Canadians' flood experience, perceptions of flood risks and socio-demographics shape their intentions and adoption of property level flood protection (PLFP). A bilingual, national survey was deployed in Spring 2016 and was completed by 2300 respondents across all 10 Canadian provinces. The survey was developed using assumptions in existing literature on flood risk behaviours and the determinants of flood risk management in similar jurisdictions. The paper argues that property owners are not willing to accept greater responsibility for flood risk as envisioned by recent policy changes. This finding is consistent with other OECD jurisdictions, where flood risk engagement strategies have been developed that could be replicated in Canada to encourage risk-sharing behaviour.

2D Modeling of Flood Propagation due to the Failure of Way Ela Natural Dam

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Yakti Bagus Pramono

2018-01-01

Full Text Available A dam break induced-flood propagation modeling is needed to reduce the losses of any potential dam failure. On the 25 July 2013, there was a dam break generated flood due to the failure of Way Ela Natural Dam that severely damaged houses and various public facilities. This study simulated the flooding induced by the failure of Way Ela Natural Dam. A two-dimensional (2D numerical model, HEC-RAS v.5, is used to simulate the overland flow. The dam failure itself is simulated using HECHMSv.4. The results of this study, the flood inundation, flood depth, and flood arrival time are verified by using available secondary data. These informations are very important to propose mitigation plans with respect to possible dam break in the future.

Future changes in atmospheric rivers and their implications for winter flooding in Britain

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lavers, David A; Allan, Richard P; Brayshaw, David J; Villarini, Gabriele; Lloyd-Hughes, Benjamin; Wade, Andrew J

2013-01-01

Within the warm conveyor belt of extra-tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers (ARs) are the key synoptic features which deliver the majority of poleward water vapour transport, and are associated with episodes of heavy and prolonged rainfall. ARs are responsible for many of the largest winter floods in the mid-latitudes resulting in major socioeconomic losses; for example, the loss from United Kingdom (UK) flooding in summer/winter 2012 is estimated to be about $1.6 billion in damages. Given the well-established link between ARs and peak river flows for the present day, assessing how ARs could respond under future climate projections is of importance in gauging future impacts from flooding. We show that North Atlantic ARs are projected to become stronger and more numerous in the future scenarios of multiple simulations from five state-of-the-art global climate models (GCMs) in the fifth Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The increased water vapour transport in projected ARs implies a greater risk of higher rainfall totals and therefore larger winter floods in Britain, with increased AR frequency leading to more flood episodes. In the high emissions scenario (RCP8.5) for 2074–2099 there is an approximate doubling of AR frequency in the five GCMs. Our results suggest that the projected change in ARs is predominantly a thermodynamic response to warming resulting from anthropogenic radiative forcing. (letter)

River flooding due to intense precipitation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lin, James C.

2014-01-01

River stage can rise and cause site flooding due to local intense precipitation (LIP), dam failures, snow melt in conjunction with precipitation or dam failures, etc. As part of the re-evaluation of the design basis as well as the PRA analysis of other external events, the likelihood and consequence of river flooding leading to the site flooding need to be examined more rigorously. To evaluate the effects of intense precipitation on site structures, the site watershed hydrology and pond storage are calculated. To determine if river flooding can cause damage to risk-significant systems, structures, and components (SSC), water surface elevations are analyzed. Typically, the amount and rate of the input water is determined first. For intense precipitation, the fraction of the rainfall in the watershed drainage area not infiltrated into the ground is collected in the river and contributes to the rise of river water elevation. For design basis analysis, the Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) is evaluated using the Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) based on the site topography/configuration. The peak runoff flow rate and water surface elevations resulting from the precipitation induced flooding can then be estimated. The runoff flow hydrograph and peak discharge flows can be developed using the synthetic hydrograph method. The standard step method can then be used to determine the water surface elevations along the river channel. Thus, the flood water from the local intense precipitation storm and excess runoff from the nearby river can be evaluated to calculate the water surface elevations, which can be compared with the station grade floor elevation to determine the effects of site flooding on risk-significant SSCs. The analysis needs to consider any possible diversion flow and the effects of changes to the site configurations. Typically, the analysis is performed based on conservative peak rainfall intensity and the assumptions of failure of the site drainage facilities

Exploitation of Documented Historical Floods for Achieving Better Flood Defense

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Slobodan Kolaković

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Establishing Base Flood Elevation for a stream network corresponding to a big catchment is feasible by interdisciplinary approach, involving stochastic hydrology, river hydraulics, and computer aided simulations. A numerical model calibrated by historical floods has been exploited in this study. The short presentation of the catchment of the Tisza River in this paper is followed by the overview of historical floods which hit the region in the documented period of 130 years. Several well documented historical floods provided opportunity for the calibration of the chosen numerical model. Once established, the model could be used for investigation of different extreme flood scenarios and to establish the Base Flood Elevation. The calibration has shown that the coefficient of friction in case of the Tisza River is dependent both on the actual water level and on the preceding flood events. The effect of flood plain maintenance as well as the activation of six potential detention ponds on flood mitigation has been examined. Furthermore, the expected maximum water levels have also been determined for the case if the ever observed biggest 1888 flood hit the region again. The investigated cases of flood superposition highlighted the impact of tributary Maros on flood mitigation along the Tisza River.

Influence of Flood Detention Capability in Flood Prevention for Flood Disaster of Depression Area

OpenAIRE

Chia Lin Chan; Yi Ju Yang; Chih Chin Yang

2011-01-01

Rainfall records of rainfall station including the rainfall potential per hour and rainfall mass of five heavy storms are explored, respectively from 2001 to 2010. The rationalization formula is to investigate the capability of flood peak duration of flood detention pond in different rainfall conditions. The stable flood detention model is also proposed by using system dynamic control theory to get the message of flood detention pond in this research. When rainfall freque...

Extreme flood event analysis in Indonesia based on rainfall intensity and recharge capacity

Science.gov (United States)

Narulita, Ida; Ningrum, Widya

2018-02-01

Indonesia is very vulnerable to flood disaster because it has high rainfall events throughout the year. Flood is categorized as the most important hazard disaster because it is causing social, economic and human losses. The purpose of this study is to analyze extreme flood event based on satellite rainfall dataset to understand the rainfall characteristic (rainfall intensity, rainfall pattern, etc.) that happened before flood disaster in the area for monsoonal, equatorial and local rainfall types. Recharge capacity will be analyzed using land cover and soil distribution. The data used in this study are CHIRPS rainfall satellite data on 0.05 ° spatial resolution and daily temporal resolution, and GSMap satellite rainfall dataset operated by JAXA on 1-hour temporal resolution and 0.1 ° spatial resolution, land use and soil distribution map for recharge capacity analysis. The rainfall characteristic before flooding, and recharge capacity analysis are expected to become the important information for flood mitigation in Indonesia.

The impact of flood disasters on child education in Muzarabani District, Zimbabwe

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Chipo Mudavanhu

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The increase in flood intensity and frequency poses a threat to community infrastructure and affects the total well-being of children in regard to: access to food, health, school attendance, access to clean water and sanitation, physical and social security. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this article provided an overview of flood disasters and their potential effects on children’s access to quality education in Zimbabwe. The purpose of the study was to analyse school children’s specific vulnerabilities to flood disasters that need to be taken into account in policy development. Research indicated that floods cause loss of learning hours, loss of qualified personnel, outbreak of waterborne diseases, high absenteeism and low syllabus coverage leading to children’s poor academic performance. Children noted a range of experiences, from food insecurity to being withdrawn from school and sometimes forced into early marriages. These challenges compromise children’s rights and access to quality education. This article therefore recommended that a culture of safety be promoted through disaster education, development of good road networks and enforcement of building codes during construction of school infrastructure. Findings also supported the need for adaptation strategies to ensure that the risks specific to school children are addressed.

Summary of floods in the United States during 1958

Science.gov (United States)

Hendricks, E.L.

1964-01-01

This report describes the most outstanding floods that occurred in the United States during 1958.A series of storms from January 23 to February 16 brought large amounts of precipitation to northern California and produced damaging floods, particularly in the Lower Sacramento Valley where losses totaled about \\$12 million.Major floods, notable because of the large area affected, occurred on many small streams in central and south Texas, following heavy general rains in late February. Extensive flooding occurred along the Gulf Coastal plain on the lower reaches of the major streams from the Brazos River to the Nueces River. Two lives were lost, and property damage exceeded \\$1 million.Damaging floods of April 1-7 followed one of the wettest winters in California history. Swollen streams overflowed their banks throughout the central part of the State, and discharge peaks on many streams exceeded those .of the floods of December 1955. Most severely flooded was the San Francisco Bay area. Total flood damage was estimated at \\$23 million.The storms and floods of April-May in Louisiana and adjacent States outranked all other floods in the United States during 1958 with respect to intensity of rain over a large area, number of streams having maximum discharge of record, rare occurrence of peaks, and great amount (\\$21 million) of resultant damage.Heavy rains on June 8-15 caused one of the greatest summer floods of record in central Indiana. Peak discharges were high and of rare occurrences. Failure of numerous levees along the Wabash River caused great damage. Crop damage alone was estimated at \\$48 million.Intense rains of July 1-2 caused record-breaking floods in southwestern Iowa. Rapid rises and the great magnitude of the floods on small streams resulted in 18 deaths and many injuries. Six towns and cities along the East Nishnabotna River and its tributaries were particularly hard hit; rural damage was also high. Total damage was estimated at \\$15 million

Effects of Flood Control Strategies on Flood Resilience Under Sociohydrological Disturbances

Science.gov (United States)

Sung, Kyungmin; Jeong, Hanseok; Sangwan, Nikhil; Yu, David J.

2018-04-01

A community capacity to cope with flood hazards, or community flood resilience, emerges from the interplay of hydrological and social processes. This interplay can be significantly influenced by the flood control strategy adopted by a society, i.e., how a society sets its desired flood protection level and strives to achieve this goal. And this interplay can be further complicated by rising land-sea level differences, seasonal water level fluctuations, and economic change. But not much research has been done on how various forms of flood control strategies affect human-flood interactions under these disturbances and therefore flood resilience in the long run. The current study is an effort to address these issues by developing a conceptual model of human-flood interaction mediated by flood control strategies. Our model extends the existing model of Yu et al. (2017), who investigated the flood resilience of a community-based flood protection system in coastal Bangladesh. The major extensions made in this study are inclusions of various forms of flood control strategies (both adaptive and nonadaptive ones), the challenge of rising land-sea level differences, and various high tide level scenarios generated from modifying the statistical variances and averages. Our results show that adaptive forms of flood control strategies tend to outperform nonadaptive ones for maintaining the model community's flood protection system. Adaptive strategies that dynamically adjust target flood protection levels through close monitoring of flood damages and social memories of flood risk can help the model community deal with various disturbances.

Public perception of flood risks, flood forecasting and mitigation

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M. Brilly

2005-01-01

Full Text Available A multidisciplinary and integrated approach to the flood mitigation decision making process should provide the best response of society in a flood hazard situation including preparation works and post hazard mitigation. In Slovenia, there is a great lack of data on social aspects and public response to flood mitigation measures and information management. In this paper, two studies of flood perception in the Slovenian town Celje are represented. During its history, Celje was often exposed to floods, the most recent serious floods being in 1990 and in 1998, with a hundred and fifty return period and more than ten year return period, respectively. Two surveys were conducted in 1997 and 2003, with 157 participants from different areas of the town in the first, and 208 in the second study, aiming at finding the general attitude toward the floods. The surveys revealed that floods present a serious threat in the eyes of the inhabitants, and that the perception of threat depends, to a certain degree, on the place of residence. The surveys also highlighted, among the other measures, solidarity and the importance of insurance against floods.

Appropriate modelling of climate change impacts on river flooding

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Booij, Martijn J.

2002-01-01

Global climate change is likely to increase temperatures, change precipitation patterns and probably raise the frequency of extreme events. Impacts of climate change on river flooding may be considerable and may cause enormous economical, social and environmental damage and even loss of lives. This

The Unsustainable Trend of Natural Hazard Losses in the United States

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Melanie Gall

2011-11-01

Full Text Available In the United States, direct losses from natural hazards are on the rise with hurricanes, flooding, and severe storms contributing about three quarters of the total damages. While losses from severe storms have been stable over the past fifty years, hurricane and flood losses have tripled. Per capita losses are also increasing showing that impacts outpace population growth with high per capita losses occurring largely in the Southeast and Midwest. If the loss escalation of the past two decades continues into the future, then direct losses of $300 to $400 billion within a single decade are possible. In order to reverse this trend, sustainable development, vulnerability reduction, and hazard mitigation must become priorities and current loss reduction efforts need to be evaluated and re-assessed in terms of their effectiveness. These conclusions are drawn from the analysis of spatial and temporal trends in direct losses from natural hazards using SHELDUSTM data from 1960 through 2009. Loss data are adjusted for inflation, population, and wealth to capture both trends in total losses and per capita losses. The loss data are then compared to disaster-related federal government and private insurance expenditures.

Geomorphic change on the Missouri River during the flood of 2011: Chapter I in 2011 Floods of the Central United States

Science.gov (United States)

Schenk, Edward R.; Skalak, Katherine J.; Benthem, Adam J.; Dietsch, Benjamin J.; Woodward, Brenda K.; Wiche, Gregg J.; Galloway, Joel M.; Nustad, Rochelle A.; Hupp, Cliff R.

2014-01-01

The 2011 flood on the Missouri River was one of the largest floods since the river became regulated by a series of high dams in the mid-20th century (greater than 150,000 cubic feet per second during the peak). The flood persisted through most of the summer, eroding river banks, adding sand to sandbars, and moving the thalweg of the channel in many places. The U.S. Geological Survey monitored and assessed the changes in two reaches of the Missouri River: the Garrison Reach in North Dakota, bounded by the Garrison Dam and the Lake Oahe Reservoir, and the Recreational Reach along the boundary of South Dakota and Nebraska bounded upstream by the Gavins Point Dam and extending downstream from Ponca, Nebraska. Historical cross-section data from the Garrison Dam closure until immediately before the flood indicate that the upper reaches of the river near the dam experienced rapid erosion, channel incision, and island/sandbar loss following the dam closure. The erosion, incision, and land loss lessened with time. Conversely, the lower reach near the Lake Oahe Reservoir slackwaters became depositional with channel in-filling and sandbar growth through time as the flow slowed upon reaching the reservoir. Preliminary post-flood results in the Garrison Reach indicate that the main channel has deepened at most cross-sections whereas sandbars and islands have grown vertically. Sandbars and the thalweg migrated within the Recreational Reach, however net scouring and aggradation was minimal. Changes in the two-dimensional area of sandbars and islands are still being assessed using high-resolution satellite imagery. A sediment balance can be constructed for the Garrison Reach using cross-sections, bathymetric data, sand traps for wind-blown material, a quasi-three-dimensional numerical model, and dating of sediment cores. Data collection and analysis for a reach-scale sediment balance and a concurrent analysis of the effects of riparian and island vegetation on sediment deposition

Floods of November-December 1950 in the Central Valley basin, California

Science.gov (United States)

Paulsen, C.G.

1953-01-01

The flood of November-December 1950 in the Central Valley basin was the greatest in most parts of the basin since the turn of the century and probably was exceeded in the lower San Joaquin River basin only by the historic flood of 1862. In respect to monetary loss, the 1950 flood was the most disastrous in the history of the basin. Loss of life was remarkably small when one considers the extensive damage and destruction to homes and other property, which is estimated at 33 million dollars. Outstanding features of the flood were its unprecedented occurrence so early in the winter flood season, its magnitude in respect to both peak and volume in most major tributaries, and the occurrence of a succession of near-peak flows with a period of three weeks. The flood was caused by a series of storms during the period November 16 to December 8, which brought exceptionally warm, moisture-laden air inland against the Sierra Nevada range and caused intense rainfall, instead of snowfall, at unusually high altitudes. Basin-wide totals of rainfall during the period ranged from 30 inches over the Yuba and American River basins to 13 inches over the upper Sacramento and Feather River basins. Based on continuous records of discharge on major tributaries for periods ranging from 22 to 55 years and averaging about 43 years, the 1950 flood peaks were the greatest of record on the American, Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, Chowchilla, Fresno, lower San Joaquin, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, and Kern Rivers. Second highest peak of record occurred during the flood of March 1928 on the Yuba, American and Mokelumne Rivers; the flood of Marcn 1940 on Cosumnes River; the flood of January 1911 on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers; the flood of December 1937 on the Merced, Kings, and Kaweah Rivers; the flood of March 1938 on the Chowchilla, Fresno, and lower San Joaquin Rivers; and the flood of March 1943 on the Tule and Kern Rivers. Peak discharges for 1950 did not exceed previous

Rapid Global River Flood Risk Assessment under Climate and Socioeconomic Scenarios: An Extreme Case of Eurasian region

Science.gov (United States)

Kwak, Young-joo; Magome, Jun; Hasegawa, Akira; Iwami, Yoichi

2017-04-01

Causing widespread devastation with massive economic damage and loss of human lives, flood disasters hamper economic growth and accelerate poverty particularly in developing countries. Globally, this trend will likely continue due to increase in flood magnitude and lack of preparedness for extreme events. In line with risk reduction efforts since the early 21st century, the monitors and governors of global river floods should pay attention to international scientific and policy communities for support to facilitate evidence-based policy making with a special interest in long-term changes due to climate change and socio-economic effects. Although advanced hydrological inundation models and risk models have been developed to reveal flood risk, hazard, exposure, and vulnerability at a river basin, it is obviously hard to identify the distribution and locations of continent-level flood risk based on national-level data. Therefore, we propose a methodological possibility for rapid global flood risk assessment with the results from its application to the two periods, i.e., Present (from 1980 to 2004) and Future (from 2075 to 2099). The method is particularly designed to effectively simplify complexities of a hazard area by calculating the differential inundation depth using GFID2M (global flood inundation depth 2-dimension model), despite low data availability. In this research, we addressed the question of which parts in the Eurasian region (8E to 180E, 0N to 60N) can be found as high-risk areas in terms of exposed population and economy in case of a 50-year return period flood. Economic losses were estimated according to the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenario, and the flood scale was defined using the annual maximum daily river discharge under the extreme conditions of climate change simulated with MRI-AGCM3.2S based on the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP8.5) emissions scenario. As a preliminary result, the total potential economic loss in the

The impact of floods in hospital and mitigation measures: A literature review

Science.gov (United States)

Yusoff, N. A.; Shafii, H.; Omar, R.

2017-11-01

In late December 2014, the flood was most significant and largest recorded specifically in the Kelantan, Malaysia. It was considered to be a “tsunami like disaster” in which 202,000 victims were displaced and causing widespread collapse of public infrastructure. Flooding of hospital results in interruption of business, loss of infrastructure, such as electrical power and water supplies, increased difficulty in providing routine medical and increased patient admissions and nursing care for patients with chronic diseases, such as renal failure, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis and mental illness. The aimed of this paper to identify the best of measures for reduce the risk of flood in hospital. Method of this paper uses the previous study result. Several related previous study can be used as measures to mitigation flood risk in Malaysian hospitals. Early stage research of related studies hope to help add more information to assist researchers in reducing the risk of flooding in hospital. The findings with proper pre-event preparation framework for mitigation flood risk of hospitals, the continuing medical services can be provided to patient especially during emergency.

Flash flood characterisation of the Haor area of Bangladesh

Science.gov (United States)

Bhattacharya, B.; Suman, A.

2012-04-01

Haors are large bowl-shaped flood plain depressions located mostly in north-eastern part of Bangladesh covering about 25% of the entire region. During dry season haors are used for agriculture and during rainy season it is used as fisheries. Haors have profound ecological importance. About 8000 migratory wild birds visit the area annually. Some of the haors are declared at Ramsar sites. Haors are frequently affected by the flash floods due to hilly topography and steep slope of the rivers draining the area. These flash floods spill onto low-lying flood plain lands in the region, inundating crops, damaging infrastructure by erosion and often causing loss of lives and properties. Climate change is exacerbating the situation. For appropriate risk mitigation mechanism it is necessary to explore flood characteristics of that region. The area is not at all studied well. Under a current project a numerical 1D2D model based on MIKE Flood is developed to study the flooding characteristics and estimate the climate change impacts on the haor region. Under this study the progression of flood levels at some key haors in relation to the water level data at specified gauges in the region is analysed. As the region is at the border with India so comparing with the gauges at the border with India is carried out. The flooding in the Haor area is associated with the rainfall in the upstream catchment in India (Meghalaya, Barak and Tripura basins in India). The flood propagation in some of the identified haors in relation to meteorological forcing in the three basins in India is analysed as well. Subsequently, a ranking of haors is done based on individual risks. Based on the IPCC recommendation the precipitation scenario in the upstream catchments under climate change is considered. The study provides the fundamental inputs for preparing a flood risk management plan of the region.

Assessing flood risk at the global scale: model setup, results, and sensitivity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ward, Philip J; Jongman, Brenden; Weiland, Frederiek Sperna; Winsemius, Hessel C; Bouwman, Arno; Ligtvoet, Willem; Van Beek, Rens; Bierkens, Marc F P

2013-01-01

Globally, economic losses from flooding exceeded $19 billion in 2012, and are rising rapidly. Hence, there is an increasing need for global-scale flood risk assessments, also within the context of integrated global assessments. We have developed and validated a model cascade for producing global flood risk maps, based on numerous flood return-periods. Validation results indicate that the model simulates interannual fluctuations in flood impacts well. The cascade involves: hydrological and hydraulic modelling; extreme value statistics; inundation modelling; flood impact modelling; and estimating annual expected impacts. The initial results estimate global impacts for several indicators, for example annual expected exposed population (169 million); and annual expected exposed GDP ($1383 billion). These results are relatively insensitive to the extreme value distribution employed to estimate low frequency flood volumes. However, they are extremely sensitive to the assumed flood protection standard; developing a database of such standards should be a research priority. Also, results are sensitive to the use of two different climate forcing datasets. The impact model can easily accommodate new, user-defined, impact indicators. We envisage several applications, for example: identifying risk hotspots; calculating macro-scale risk for the insurance industry and large companies; and assessing potential benefits (and costs) of adaptation measures. (letter)

Repetitive Questioning II

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. C. Hamdy MD

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Repetitive questioning is a major problem for caregivers, particularly taxing if they are unable to recognize and understand the reasons why their loved one keeps asking the same question over and over again. Caregivers may be tempted to believe that the patient does not even try to remember the answer given or is just getting obnoxious. This is incorrect. Repetitive questioning is due to the underlying disease: The patient’s short term memory is impaired and he is unable to register, encode, retain and retrieve the answer. If he is concerned about a particular topic, he will keep asking the same question over and over again. To the patient each time she asks the question, it is as if she asked it for the first time. Just answering repetitive questioning by providing repeatedly the same answer is not sufficient. Caregivers should try to identify the underlying cause for this repetitive questioning. In an earlier case study, the patient was concerned about her and her family’s safety and kept asking whether the doors are locked. In this present case study, the patient does not know how to handle the awkward situation he finds himself in. He just does not know what to do. He is not able to adjust to the new unexpected situation. So he repeatedly wants to reassure himself that he is not intruding by asking the same question over and over again. We discuss how the patient’s son-in-law could have avoided this situation and averted the catastrophic ending.

National water summary 1988-89: Hydrologic events and floods and droughts

Science.gov (United States)

Paulson, Richard W.; Chase, Edith B.; Roberts, Robert S.; Moody, David W.

1991-01-01

National Water Summary 1988-89 - Hydrologic Events and Floods and Droughts documents the occurrence in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands of two types of extreme hydrologic events floods and droughts on the basis of analysis of stream-discharge data. This report details, for the first time, the areal extent of the most notable floods and droughts in each State, portrays their severity in terms of annual peak discharge for floods and annual departure from long-term discharge for droughts for selected stream-gaging stations, and estimates how frequently floods and droughts of such severity can be expected to recur. These two types of extreme hydrologic events are very different in their duration, cause, areal extent, and effect on human activities. Floods are short-term phenomena that typically last only a few hours to a few days and are associated with weather systems that produce unusually large amounts of rain or that cause snow to melt quickly. The large amount of runoff produced causes rivers to overflow their banks and, thus, is highly dangerous to human life and property. In contrast, droughts are long-term phenomena that typically persist for months to a decade or more and are associated with the absence of precipitation producing weather. They affect large geographic areas that can be statewide, regional, or even nationwide in extent. Droughts can cause great economic hardship and even loss of life in developing countries, although the loss of life results almost wholly from diminished water supplies and catastrophic crop failures rather than from the direct and obvious peril to human life that is common to floods. The following discussion is an overview of the three parts of this 1988-89 National Water Summary "Hydrologic Conditions and Water-Related Events, Water Years 1988-89," "Hydrologic Perspectives on Water Issues," and "State Summaries of Floods and Droughts." Background information on sources of atmospheric moisture to the

Analysis and GIS Mapping of Flooding Hazards on 10 May 2016, Guangzhou, China

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hai-Min Lyu

2016-10-01

Full Text Available On 10 May 2016, Guangdong Province, China, suffered a heavy rainstorm. This rainstorm flooded the whole city of Guangzhou. More than 100,000 people were affected by the flooding, in which eight people lost their lives. Subway stations, cars, and buses were submerged. In order to analyse the influential factors of this flooding, topographical characteristics were mapped using Digital Elevation Model (DEM by the Geographical Information System (GIS and meteorological conditions were statistically summarised at both the whole city level and the district level. To analyse the relationship between flood risk and urbanization, GIS was also adopted to map the effect of the subway system using the Multiple Buffer operator over the flooding distribution area. Based on the analyses, one of the significant influential factors of flooding was identified as the urbanization degree, e.g., construction of a subway system, which forms along flood-prone areas. The total economic loss due to flooding in city centers with high urbanization has become very serious. Based on the analyses, the traditional standard of severity of flooding hazards (rainfall intensity grade was modified. Rainfall intensity for severity flooding was decreased from 50 mm to 30 mm in urbanized city centers. In order to protect cities from flooding, a “Sponge City” planning approach is recommended to increase the temporary water storage capacity during heavy rainstorms. In addition, for future city management, the combined use of GIS and Building Information Modelling (BIM is recommended to evaluate flooding hazards.

Mapping flood hazards under uncertainty through probabilistic flood inundation maps

Science.gov (United States)

Stephens, T.; Bledsoe, B. P.; Miller, A. J.; Lee, G.

2017-12-01

Changing precipitation, rapid urbanization, and population growth interact to create unprecedented challenges for flood mitigation and management. Standard methods for estimating risk from flood inundation maps generally involve simulations of floodplain hydraulics for an established regulatory discharge of specified frequency. Hydraulic model results are then geospatially mapped and depicted as a discrete boundary of flood extents and a binary representation of the probability of inundation (in or out) that is assumed constant over a project's lifetime. Consequently, existing methods utilized to define flood hazards and assess risk management are hindered by deterministic approaches that assume stationarity in a nonstationary world, failing to account for spatio-temporal variability of climate and land use as they translate to hydraulic models. This presentation outlines novel techniques for portraying flood hazards and the results of multiple flood inundation maps spanning hydroclimatic regions. Flood inundation maps generated through modeling of floodplain hydraulics are probabilistic reflecting uncertainty quantified through Monte-Carlo analyses of model inputs and parameters under current and future scenarios. The likelihood of inundation and range of variability in flood extents resulting from Monte-Carlo simulations are then compared with deterministic evaluations of flood hazards from current regulatory flood hazard maps. By facilitating alternative approaches of portraying flood hazards, the novel techniques described in this presentation can contribute to a shifting paradigm in flood management that acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in model estimates and the nonstationary behavior of land use and climate.

Dam-breach analysis and flood-inundation mapping for Lakes Ellsworth and Lawtonka near Lawton, Oklahoma

Science.gov (United States)

Rendon, Samuel H.; Ashworth, Chad E.; Smith, S. Jerrod

2012-01-01

Dams provide beneficial functions such as flood control, recreation, and reliable water supplies, but they also entail risk: dam breaches and resultant floods can cause substantial property damage and loss of life. The State of Oklahoma requires each owner of a high-hazard dam, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency defines as dams for which failure or misoperation probably will cause loss of human life, to develop an emergency action plan specific to that dam. Components of an emergency action plan are to simulate a flood resulting from a possible dam breach and map the resulting downstream flood-inundation areas. The resulting flood-inundation maps can provide valuable information to city officials, emergency managers, and local residents for planning the emergency response if a dam breach occurs. Accurate topographic data are vital for developing flood-inundation maps. This report presents results of a cooperative study by the city of Lawton, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to model dam-breach scenarios at Lakes Ellsworth and Lawtonka near Lawton and to map the potential flood-inundation areas of such dam breaches. To assist the city of Lawton with completion of the emergency action plans for Lakes Ellsworth and Lawtonka Dams, the USGS collected light detection and ranging (lidar) data that were used to develop a high-resolution digital elevation model and a 1-foot contour elevation map for the flood plains downstream from Lakes Ellsworth and Lawtonka. This digital elevation model and field measurements, streamflow-gaging station data (USGS streamflow-gaging station 07311000, East Cache Creek near Walters, Okla.), and hydraulic values were used as inputs for the dynamic (unsteady-flow) model, Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System (HEC-RAS). The modeled flood elevations were exported to a geographic information system to produce flood-inundation maps. Water-surface profiles were developed for a 75-percent probable maximum

Post flood damage data collection and assessment in Albania based on DesInventar methodology

Science.gov (United States)

Toto, Emanuela; Massabo, Marco; Deda, Miranda; Rossello, Laura

2015-04-01

In 2013 in Albania was implemented a collection of disaster losses based on Desinventar. The DesInventar system consists in a methodology and software tool that lead to the systematic collection, documentation and analysis of loss data on disasters. The main sources of information about disasters used for the Albanian database were the Albanian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Library and the State archive. Specifically for floods the database created contains nearly 900 datasets, for a period of 148 years (from 1865 to 2013). The data are georeferenced on the administrative units of Albania: Region, Provinces and Municipalities. The datasets describe the events by reporting the date of occurrence, the duration, the localization in administrative units and the cause. Additional information regards the effects and damage that the event caused on people (deaths, injured, missing, affected, relocated, evacuated, victims) and on houses (houses damaged or destroyed). Other quantitative indicators are the losses in local currency or US dollars, the damage on roads, the crops affected , the lost cattle and the involvement of social elements over the territory such as education and health centers. Qualitative indicators simply register the sectors (e.g. transportations, communications, relief, agriculture, water supply, sewerage, power and energy, industries, education, health sector, other sectors) that were affected. Through the queries and analysis of the data collected it was possible to identify the most affected areas, the economic loss, the damage in agriculture, the houses and people affected and many other variables. The most vulnerable Regions for the past floods in Albania were studied and individuated, as well as the rivers that cause more damage in the country. Other analysis help to estimate the damage and losses during the main flood events of the recent years, occurred in 2010 and 2011, and to recognize the most affected sectors. The database was

Hidden Markov Model-based Packet Loss Concealment for Voice over IP

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rødbro, Christoffer A.; Murthi, Manohar N.; Andersen, Søren Vang

2006-01-01

As voice over IP proliferates, packet loss concealment (PLC) at the receiver has emerged as an important factor in determining voice quality of service. Through the use of heuristic variations of signal and parameter repetition and overlap-add interpolation to handle packet loss, conventional PLC...

Application research for 4D technology in flood forecasting and evaluation

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Ziwei; Liu, Yutong; Cao, Hongjie

1998-08-01

In order to monitor the region which disaster flood happened frequently in China, satisfy the great need of province governments for high accuracy monitoring and evaluated data for disaster and improve the efficiency for repelling disaster, under the Ninth Five-year National Key Technologies Programme, the method was researched for flood forecasting and evaluation using satellite and aerial remoted sensed image and land monitor data. The effective and practicable flood forecasting and evaluation system was established and DongTing Lake was selected as the test site. Modern Digital photogrammetry, remote sensing and GIS technology was used in this system, the disastrous flood could be forecasted and loss can be evaluated base on '4D' (DEM -- Digital Elevation Model, DOQ -- Digital OrthophotoQuads, DRG -- Digital Raster Graph, DTI -- Digital Thematic Information) disaster background database. The technology of gathering and establishing method for '4D' disaster environment background database, application technology for flood forecasting and evaluation based on '4D' background data and experimental results for DongTing Lake test site were introduced in detail in this paper.

Analysis of flood inundation in ungauged basins based on multi-source remote sensing data.

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Wei; Shen, Qiu; Zhou, Yuehua; Li, Xin

2018-02-09

Floods are among the most expensive natural hazards experienced in many places of the world and can result in heavy losses of life and economic damages. The objective of this study is to analyze flood inundation in ungauged basins by performing near-real-time detection with flood extent and depth based on multi-source remote sensing data. Via spatial distribution analysis of flood extent and depth in a time series, the inundation condition and the characteristics of flood disaster can be reflected. The results show that the multi-source remote sensing data can make up the lack of hydrological data in ungauged basins, which is helpful to reconstruct hydrological sequence; the combination of MODIS (moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer) surface reflectance productions and the DFO (Dartmouth Flood Observatory) flood database can achieve the macro-dynamic monitoring of the flood inundation in ungauged basins, and then the differential technique of high-resolution optical and microwave images before and after floods can be used to calculate flood extent to reflect spatial changes of inundation; the monitoring algorithm for the flood depth combining RS and GIS is simple and easy and can quickly calculate the depth with a known flood extent that is obtained from remote sensing images in ungauged basins. Relevant results can provide effective help for the disaster relief work performed by government departments.

Recent changes in flood damage in the United States from observations and ACME model

Science.gov (United States)

Leng, G.; Leung, L. R.

2017-12-01

Despite efforts to mitigate flood hazards in flood-prone areas, survey- and report-based flood databases show that flood damage has increased and emerged as one of the most costly disaster in the United States since the 1990s. Understanding the mechanism driving the changes in flood damage is therefore critical for reducing flood risk. In this study, we first conduct a comprehensive analysis of the changing characteristics of flood damage at local, state and country level. Results show a significant increasing trend in the number of flood hazards, causing economic losses of up to $7 billion per year. The ratio of flood events that caused tangible economical cost to the total flood events has exhibited a non-significant increasing trend before 2007 followed by a significant decrease, indicating a changing vulnerability to floods. Analysis also reveals distinct spatial and temporal patterns in the threshold intensity of flood hazards with tangible economical cost. To understand the mechanism behind the increasing flood damage, we develop a flood damage economic model coupled with the integrated hydrological modeling system of ACME that features a river routing model with an inundation parameterization and a water use and regulation model. The model is evaluated over the country against historical records. Several numerical experiments are then designed to explore the mechanisms behind the recent changes in flood damage from the perspective of flood hazard, exposure and vulnerability, which constitute flood damage. The role of human activities such as reservoir operations and water use in modifying regional floods are also explored using the new tool, with the goal of improving understanding and modeling of vulnerability to flood hazards.

Emotional response to musical repetition.

Science.gov (United States)

Livingstone, Steven R; Palmer, Caroline; Schubert, Emery

2012-06-01

Two experiments examined the effects of repetition on listeners' emotional response to music. Listeners heard recordings of orchestral music that contained a large section repeated twice. The music had a symmetric phrase structure (same-length phrases) in Experiment 1 and an asymmetric phrase structure (different-length phrases) in Experiment 2, hypothesized to alter the predictability of sensitivity to musical repetition. Continuous measures of arousal and valence were compared across music that contained identical repetition, variation (related), or contrasting (unrelated) structure. Listeners' emotional arousal ratings differed most for contrasting music, moderately for variations, and least for repeating musical segments. A computational model for the detection of repeated musical segments was applied to the listeners' emotional responses. The model detected the locations of phrase boundaries from the emotional responses better than from performed tempo or physical intensity in both experiments. These findings indicate the importance of repetition in listeners' emotional response to music and in the perceptual segmentation of musical structure.

Methods for estimating magnitude and frequency of floods in Arizona, developed with unregulated and rural peak-flow data through water year 2010

Science.gov (United States)

Paretti, Nicholas V.; Kennedy, Jeffrey R.; Turney, Lovina A.; Veilleux, Andrea G.

2014-01-01

Flooding is among the worst natural disasters responsible for loss of life and property in Arizona, underscoring the importance of accurate estimation of flood magnitude for proper structural design and floodplain mapping. Twenty-four years of additional peak-flow data have been recorded since the last comprehensive regional flood frequency analysis conducted in Arizona. Periodically, flood frequency estimates and regional regression equations must be revised to maintain the accurate estimation of flood frequency and magnitude.

Flood characteristics of the Haor area in Bangladesh

Science.gov (United States)

Suman, Asadusjjaman; Bhattacharya, Biswa

2013-04-01

In recent years the world has experienced deaths, large-scale displacement of people, billions of Euros of economic damage, mental stress and ecosystem impacts due to flooding. Global changes (climate change, population and economic growth, and urbanisation) are exacerbating the severity of flooding. The 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 floods in Australia and Thailand demonstrate the need for concerted action in the face of global societal and environmental changes to strengthen resilience against flooding. Bangladesh is a country, which is frequently suffering from flooding. The current research is conducted in the framework of a project, which focuses on the flooding issues in the Haor region in the north-east of Bangladesh. A haor is a saucer-shaped depression, which is used during the dry period (December to mid-May) for agriculture and as a fishery during the wet period (June-November), and thereby presents a very interesting socio-economic perspective of flood risk management. Pre-monsoon flooding till mid-May causes agricultural loss and lot of distress whereas monsoon flooding brings benefits. The area is bordering India, thereby presenting trans-boundary issues as well, and is fed by some flashy Indian catchments. The area is drained mainly through the Surma-Kushiyara river system. The terrain generally is flat and the flashy characteristics die out within a short distance from the border. Limited studies on the region, particularly with the help of numerical models, have been carried out in the past. Therefore, an objective of the current research was to set up numerical models capable of reasonably emulating the physical system. Such models could, for example, associate different gauges to the spatio-temporal variation of hydrodynamic variables and help in carrying out a systemic study on the impact of climate changes. A 1D2D model, with one-dimensional model for the rivers (based on MIKE 11 modelling tool from Danish Hydraulic Institute) and a two

Surfactant loss control in chemical flooding spectroscopic and calorimetric study of adsorption and precipitation on reservoir minerals. Annual report, September 30, 1993--September 30, 1994

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Somasundaran, P.

1995-06-01

The aim of this project is to elucidate the mechanisms underlying adsorption and surface precipitation of flooding surfactants on reservoir minerals. Effect of surfactant structure, surfactant combinations, other inorganic and polymeric species is being studied. A multi-pronged approach consisting of micro and nano spectroscopy, microcalorimetry, electrokinetics, surface tension and wettability is used to achieve the goals. The results of this study should help in controlling surfactant loss in chemical flooding and also in developing optimum structures and conditions for efficient chemical flooding processes. During the second year of this three year contract, adsorption/desorption of single surfactants and select surfactant mixtures on alumina and silica was studied. Surfactants studied include the anionic sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), cationic tetradecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride (TTAC), nonionic pentadecylethoxylated nonyl phenol (NP-15) and the nonionic octaethylene glycol n-dodecyl ether (C{sub 12}EO{sub 8}) of varying hydrocarbon chain length. The microstructure of the adsorbed layer in terms of micropolarity and aggregation numbers was probed using fluorescence spectroscopy. Changes of microstructure upon dilution (desorption) were also studied. Presence of the nonionic surfactant in the mixed aggregate led to shielding of the charge of the ionic surfactant which in-turn promoted aggregation but reduced electrostatic attraction between the charged surfactant and the mineral surface. Strong consequences of surfactant interactions in solution upon adsorption as well as correlations between monomer concentrations in mixtures and adsorption were revealed.

Flood Risk Management In Europe: European flood regulation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hegger, D.L.T.; Bakker, M.H.; Green, C.; Driessen, Peter; Delvaux, B.; Rijswick, H.F.M.W. van; Suykens, C.; Beyers, J-C.; Deketelaere, K.; Doorn-Hoekveld, W. van; Dieperink, C.

2013-01-01

In Europe, water management is moving from flood defense to a risk management approach, which takes both the probability and the potential consequences of flooding into account. In this report, we will look at Directives and (non-)EU- initiatives in place to deal with flood risk in Europe indirectly

Citizen involvement in flood risk governance: flood groups and networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Twigger-Ross Clare

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Over the past decade has been a policy shift withinUK flood risk management towards localism with an emphasis on communities taking ownership of flood risk. There is also an increased focus on resilience and, more specifically, on community resilience to flooding. This paper draws on research carried out for UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs to evaluate the Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP scheme in England. Resilience is conceptualised as multidimensional and linked to exisiting capacities within a community. Creating resilience to flooding is an ongoing process of adaptation, learning from past events and preparing for future risks. This paper focusses on the development of formal and informal institutions to support improved flood risk management: institutional resilience capacity. It includes new institutions: e.g. flood groups, as well as activities that help to build inter- and intra- institutional resilience capacity e.g. community flood planning. The pathfinder scheme consisted of 13 projects across England led by local authorities aimed at developing community resilience to flood risk between 2013 – 2015. This paper discusses the nature and structure of flood groups, the process of their development, and the extent of their linkages with formal institutions, drawing out the barriers and facilitators to developing institutional resilience at the local level.

Finite Length Analysis of Irregular Repetition Slotted ALOHA in the Waterfall Region

OpenAIRE

Amat, Alexandre Graell i; Liva, Gianluigi

2018-01-01

A finite length analysis is introduced for irregular repetition slotted ALOHA (IRSA) that enables to accurately estimate its performance in the moderate-to-high packet loss probability regime, i.e., in the so-called waterfall region. The analysis is tailored to the collision channel model, which enables mapping the description of the successive interference cancellation process onto the iterative erasure decoding of low-density parity-check codes. The analysis provides accurate estimates of t...

Loss functions for structural flood mitigation measures

African Journals Online (AJOL)

drinie

2001-01-01

Jan 1, 2001 ... for spillways, levees, tramlines, public roads, drains and bridges. Introduction. The aim of this paper is to discuss the ... In the third section the steps that were followed to determine loss functions for ... Wilson's Cannal-, 31/2-, Low Level- and Monzi Bridge, are also maintained by the co-operative. A tramline ...

Urban flood risk warning under rapid urbanization.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Yangbo; Zhou, Haolan; Zhang, Hui; Du, Guoming; Zhou, Jinhui

2015-05-01

In the past decades, China has observed rapid urbanization, the nation's urban population reached 50% in 2000, and is still in steady increase. Rapid urbanization in China has an adverse impact on urban hydrological processes, particularly in increasing the urban flood risks and causing serious urban flooding losses. Urban flooding also increases health risks such as causing epidemic disease break out, polluting drinking water and damaging the living environment. In the highly urbanized area, non-engineering measurement is the main way for managing urban flood risk, such as flood risk warning. There is no mature method and pilot study for urban flood risk warning, the purpose of this study is to propose the urban flood risk warning method for the rapidly urbanized Chinese cities. This paper first presented an urban flood forecasting model, which produces urban flood inundation index for urban flood risk warning. The model has 5 modules. The drainage system and grid dividing module divides the whole city terrain into drainage systems according to its first-order river system, and delineates the drainage system into grids based on the spatial structure with irregular gridding technique; the precipitation assimilation module assimilates precipitation for every grids which is used as the model input, which could either be the radar based precipitation estimation or interpolated one from rain gauges; runoff production module classifies the surface into pervious and impervious surface, and employs different methods to calculate the runoff respectively; surface runoff routing module routes the surface runoff and determines the inundation index. The routing on surface grid is calculated according to the two dimensional shallow water unsteady flow algorithm, the routing on land channel and special channel is calculated according to the one dimensional unsteady flow algorithm. This paper then proposed the urban flood risk warning method that is called DPSIR model based

A global framework for future costs and benefits of river-flood protection in urban areas

Science.gov (United States)

Ward, Philip J.; Jongman, Brenden; Aerts, Jeroen C. J. H.; Bates, Paul D.; Botzen, Wouter J. W.; Diaz Loaiza, Andres; Hallegatte, Stephane; Kind, Jarl M.; Kwadijk, Jaap; Scussolini, Paolo; Winsemius, Hessel C.

2017-09-01

Floods cause billions of dollars of damage each year, and flood risks are expected to increase due to socio-economic development, subsidence, and climate change. Implementing additional flood risk management measures can limit losses, protecting people and livelihoods. Whilst several models have been developed to assess global-scale river-flood risk, methods for evaluating flood risk management investments globally are lacking. Here, we present a framework for assessing costs and benefits of structural flood protection measures in urban areas around the world. We demonstrate its use under different assumptions of current and future climate change and socio-economic development. Under these assumptions, investments in dykes may be economically attractive for reducing risk in large parts of the world, but not everywhere. In some regions, economically efficient investments could reduce future flood risk below today’s levels, in spite of climate change and economic growth. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of the results to different assumptions and parameters. The framework can be used to identify regions where river-flood protection investments should be prioritized, or where other risk-reducing strategies should be emphasized.

Economic Risk Evaluation in Urban Flooding and Instability-Prone Areas: The Case Study of San Giovanni Rotondo (Southern Italy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roberta Pellicani

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Estimating economic losses caused on buildings and other civil engineering works due to flooding events is often a difficult task. The accuracy of the estimate is affected by the availability of detailed data regarding the return period of the flooding event, vulnerability of exposed assets, and type of economy run in the affected area. This paper aims to provide a quantitative methodology for the assessment of economic losses associated with flood scenarios. The proposed methodology was performed for an urban area in Southern Italy prone to hydrogeological instabilities. At first, the main physical characteristics of the area such as rainfall, land use, permeability, roughness, and slopes of the area under investigation were estimated in order to obtain input for flooding simulations. Afterwards, the analysis focused on the spatial variability incidence of the rainfall parameters in flood events. The hydraulic modeling provided different flood hazard scenarios. The risk curve obtained by plotting economic consequences vs. the return period for each hazard scenario can be a useful tool for local authorities to identify adequate risk mitigation measures and therefore prioritize the economic resources necessary for the implementation of such mitigation measures.

The economic costs of natural disasters globally from 1900-2015: historical and normalised floods, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, bushfires, drought and other disasters

Science.gov (United States)

Daniell, James; Wenzel, Friedemann; Schaefer, Andreas

2016-04-01

For the first time, a breakdown of natural disaster losses from 1900-2015 based on over 30,000 event economic losses globally is given based on increased analysis within the CATDAT Damaging Natural Disaster databases. Using country-CPI and GDP deflator adjustments, over 7 trillion (2015-adjusted) in losses have occurred; over 40% due to flood/rainfall, 26% due to earthquake, 19% due to storm effects, 12% due to drought, 2% due to wildfire and under 1% due to volcano. Using construction cost indices, higher percentages of flood losses are seen. Depending on how the adjustment of dollars are made to 2015 terms (CPI vs. construction cost indices), between 6.5 and 14.0 trillion USD (2015-adjusted) of natural disaster losses have been seen from 1900-2015 globally. Significant reductions in economic losses have been seen in China and Japan from 1950 onwards. An AAL of around 200 billion in the last 16 years has been seen equating to around 0.25% of Global GDP or around 0.1% of Net Capital Stock per year. Normalised losses have also been calculated to examine the trends in vulnerability through time for economic losses. The normalisation methodology globally using the exposure databases within CATDAT that were undertaken previously in papers for the earthquake and volcano databases, are used for this study. The original event year losses are adjusted directly by capital stock change, very high losses are observed with respect to floods over time (however with improved flood control structures). This shows clear trends in the improvement of building stock towards natural disasters and a decreasing trend in most perils for most countries.

Effects of a flooding event on a threatened black bear population in Louisiana

Science.gov (United States)

O'Connell-Goode, Kaitlin C.; Lowe, Carrie L.; Clark, Joseph D.

2014-01-01

The Louisiana black bear, Ursus americanus luteolus, is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act as a result of habitat loss and human-related mortality. Information on population-level responses of large mammals to flooding events is scarce, and we had a unique opportunity to evaluate the viability of the Upper Atchafalaya River Basin (UARB) black bear population before and after a significant flooding event. We began collecting black bear hair samples in 2007 for a DNA mark-recapture study to estimate abundance (N) and apparent survival (φ). In 2011, the Morganza Spillway was opened to divert floodwaters from the Mississippi River through the UARB, inundating > 50% of our study area, potentially impacting recovery of this important bear population. To evaluate the effects of this flooding event on bear population dynamics, we used a robust design multistate model to estimate changes in transition rates from the flooded area to non-flooded area (ψF→NF) before (2007–2010), during (2010–2011) and after (2011–2012) the flood. Average N across all years of study was 63.2 (SE = 5.2), excluding the year of the flooding event. Estimates of ψF→NF increased from 0.014 (SE = 0.010; meaning that 1.4% of the bears moved from the flooded area to non-flooded areas) before flooding to 0.113 (SE = 0.045) during the flood year, and then decreased to 0.028 (SE= 0.035) after the flood. Although we demonstrated a flood effect on transition rates as hypothesized, the effect was small (88.7% of the bears remained in the flooded area during flooding) and φ was unchanged, suggesting that the 2011 flooding event had minimal impact on survival and site fidelity.

Increasing severity of damage caused by floods in the Spanish Mediterranean coast (1960-2014), climate change or vulnerability?

Science.gov (United States)

Perez, Alfredo; Gil, Salvador; Lopez, Francisco; Barriendos, Mariano

2016-04-01

In recent decades, there has been an increase in physical and economic losses (WMO, CRED and UCL, 2014) that raises serious concerns in society. Climate change projections may explain the rise in flood losses; however, these shouldn't be considered yet (Bouwer, 2011). According to IPCC (2014), there is low confidence in anthropogenic climate change affecting the frequency and magnitude of fluvial floods on a global scale. In other words, this increase in flood events is not completely related to the higher frequency of heavy rainfall. To illustrate the aforementioned, a spatial example can be seen in the study area. In the Spanish Mediterranean coast, we see an increase in economic losses within the last 50 years due to flood events (Gil et al., 2014). It seems that the socio-economic growth and the rise of housing construction (Gaja, 2008) have led to an increase in vulnerability and exposure which are mainly responsible for those losses and the increase in severity of flood events (Pérez et al., 2015). Furthermore, this situation will probably become more precarious if some climate forecasts are met [IPCC, 2014; AEMET, 2015], and if the economic model fails to adopt efficient adaptive measures. Therefore, it is interesting to focus attention on social factors either within the present or future scenario in order to minimise the potential consequences and improve the adaptation. The main objective of this work focuses on the study of the evolution of the severity of the floods in the Spanish Mediterranean coast for the period (1960-2015). To do that, a statistical analysis of the data base [Gil et al., 2014; extended to the entire Spanish Mediterranean coast (MEDIFLOOD)] and a multiscale mapping (local, provincial and regional level) of the frequency of these events will take place in order to make comparisons and show spatiotemporal patterns according to the severity events evolution. Preliminary results show some interesting statistically significant

Flood-rich and flood-poor periods in Spain in 1942-2009

Science.gov (United States)

Mediero, Luis; Santillán, David; Garrote, Luis

2016-04-01

Several studies to detect trends in flood series at either national or trans-national scales have been conducted. Mediero et al. (2015) studied flood trends by using the longest streamflow records available in Europe. They found a decreasing trend in the Atlantic, Continental and Scandinavian regions. More specifically, Mediero et al. (2014) found a general decreasing trend in flood series in Spain in the period 1959-2009. Trends in flood series are usually detected by the Mann-Kendall test applied to a given period. However, the result of the Mann-Kendall test can change in terms of the starting and ending year of the series. Flood oscillations can occur and flood-rich and flood-poor periods could condition the results, especially when they are located at the beginning or end of the series. A methodology to identify statistically significant flood-rich and flood-poor periods is developed, based on the comparison between the expected sampling variability of floods when stationarity is assumed and the observed variability of floods in a given series. The methodology is applied to the longest series of annual maximum floods, peaks over threshold and counts of annual occurrences in peaks over threshold series observed in Spain in the period 1942-2009. A flood-rich period in 1950-1970 and a flood-poor period in 1970-1990 are identified in most of the selected sites. The generalised decreasing trend in flood series found by Mediero et al. (2014) could be explained by a flood-rich period placed at the beginning of the series and a flood-poor period located at the end of the series. References: Mediero, L., Kjeldsen, T.R., Macdonald, N., Kohnova, S., Merz, B., Vorogushyn, S., Wilson, D., Alburquerque, T., Blöschl, G., Bogdanowicz, E., Castellarin, A., Hall, J., Kobold, M., Kriauciuniene, J., Lang, M., Madsen, H., Onuşluel Gül, G., Perdigão, R.A.P., Roald, L.A., Salinas, J.L., Toumazis, A.D., Veijalainen, N., Óðinn Þórarinsson. Identification of coherent flood

Repetitive learning control of continuous chaotic systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Maoyin; Shang Yun; Zhou Donghua

2004-01-01

Combining a shift method and the repetitive learning strategy, a repetitive learning controller is proposed to stabilize unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) within chaotic attractors in the sense of least mean square. If nonlinear parts in chaotic systems satisfy Lipschitz condition, the proposed controller can be simplified into a simple proportional repetitive learning controller

Novel porcine repetitive elements

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nonneman Dan J

2006-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Repetitive elements comprise ~45% of mammalian genomes and are increasingly known to impact genomic function by contributing to the genomic architecture, by direct regulation of gene expression and by affecting genomic size, diversity and evolution. The ubiquity and increasingly understood importance of repetitive elements contribute to the need to identify and annotate them. We set out to identify previously uncharacterized repetitive DNA in the porcine genome. Once found, we characterized the prevalence of these repeats in other mammals. Results We discovered 27 repetitive elements in 220 BACs covering 1% of the porcine genome (Comparative Vertebrate Sequencing Initiative; CVSI. These repeats varied in length from 55 to 1059 nucleotides. To estimate copy numbers, we went to an independent source of data, the BAC-end sequences (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, covering approximately 15% of the porcine genome. Copy numbers in BAC-ends were less than one hundred for 6 repeat elements, between 100 and 1000 for 16 and between 1,000 and 10,000 for 5. Several of the repeat elements were found in the bovine genome and we have identified two with orthologous sites, indicating that these elements were present in their common ancestor. None of the repeat elements were found in primate, rodent or dog genomes. We were unable to identify any of the replication machinery common to active transposable elements in these newly identified repeats. Conclusion The presence of both orthologous and non-orthologous sites indicates that some sites existed prior to speciation and some were generated later. The identification of low to moderate copy number repetitive DNA that is specific to artiodactyls will be critical in the assembly of livestock genomes and studies of comparative genomics.

Recent advances in flood forecasting and flood risk assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. Arduino

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Recent large floods in Europe have led to increased interest in research and development of flood forecasting systems. Some of these events have been provoked by some of the wettest rainfall periods on record which has led to speculation that such extremes are attributable in some measure to anthropogenic global warming and represent the beginning of a period of higher flood frequency. Whilst current trends in extreme event statistics will be difficult to discern, conclusively, there has been a substantial increase in the frequency of high floods in the 20th century for basins greater than 2x105 km2. There is also increasing that anthropogenic forcing of climate change may lead to an increased probability of extreme precipitation and, hence, of flooding. There is, therefore, major emphasis on the improvement of operational flood forecasting systems in Europe, with significant European Community spending on research and development on prototype forecasting systems and flood risk management projects. This Special Issue synthesises the most relevant scientific and technological results presented at the International Conference on Flood Forecasting in Europe held in Rotterdam from 3-5 March 2003. During that meeting 150 scientists, forecasters and stakeholders from four continents assembled to present their work and current operational best practice and to discuss future directions of scientific and technological efforts in flood prediction and prevention. The papers presented at the conference fall into seven themes, as follows.

Document retrieval on repetitive string collections.

Science.gov (United States)

Gagie, Travis; Hartikainen, Aleksi; Karhu, Kalle; Kärkkäinen, Juha; Navarro, Gonzalo; Puglisi, Simon J; Sirén, Jouni

2017-01-01

Most of the fastest-growing string collections today are repetitive, that is, most of the constituent documents are similar to many others. As these collections keep growing, a key approach to handling them is to exploit their repetitiveness, which can reduce their space usage by orders of magnitude. We study the problem of indexing repetitive string collections in order to perform efficient document retrieval operations on them. Document retrieval problems are routinely solved by search engines on large natural language collections, but the techniques are less developed on generic string collections. The case of repetitive string collections is even less understood, and there are very few existing solutions. We develop two novel ideas, interleaved LCPs and precomputed document lists , that yield highly compressed indexes solving the problem of document listing (find all the documents where a string appears), top- k document retrieval (find the k documents where a string appears most often), and document counting (count the number of documents where a string appears). We also show that a classical data structure supporting the latter query becomes highly compressible on repetitive data. Finally, we show how the tools we developed can be combined to solve ranked conjunctive and disjunctive multi-term queries under the simple [Formula: see text] model of relevance. We thoroughly evaluate the resulting techniques in various real-life repetitiveness scenarios, and recommend the best choices for each case.

REPETITIVE STRENGTH AMONG STUDENTS OF AGE 14

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Besim Halilaj

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The study involved 82 male students of the primary school “Qamil Ilazi” in Kaçanik-Kosovo.Four movement tests, which test the repetitive strength, were conducted: 1. Pull-up, 2. Sit-Up, 3. Back extension, 4. Push-up.The main goal of this study was to verify the actual motor status, respectively the component of the repetitive strength among students of age 14 of masculine gender. In addition to verifying the actual motor status, another objective was to verify the relationship between the variables employed.Basic statistical parameters show a distribution which is not significantly different from the normal distribution, yielded highly correlative values among the repetitive strength tests. Space factorization resulted in extracting two latent squares defined as repetitive strength of arms factor, and repetitive strength of body factor.

The environmental impact of flooding of the Dutch "Delta-metropole"

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stuyt, L.C.P.M.; Reinders, J.E.A.; Hoek, van der E.E.; Hermans, E.G.M.; Muinck Keizer, de M.; Icke, J.

2007-01-01

Model studies into the consequences of flooding events usually focus on damage to buildings, infrastructure, economic losses and casualties yet ignore the risk of environmental damage. In this project, a model study was made to assess the environmental consequences of the release of pollutants

Coupling Radar Rainfall Estimation and Hydrological Modelling For Flash-flood Hazard Mitigation

Science.gov (United States)

Borga, M.; Creutin, J. D.

Flood risk mitigation is accomplished through managing either or both the hazard and vulnerability. Flood hazard may be reduced through structural measures which alter the frequency of flood levels in the area. The vulnerability of a community to flood loss can be mitigated through changing or regulating land use and through flood warning and effective emergency response. When dealing with flash-flood hazard, it is gener- ally accepted that the most effective way (and in many instances the only affordable in a sustainable perspective) to mitigate the risk is by reducing the vulnerability of the involved communities, in particular by implementing flood warning systems and community self-help programs. However, both the inherent characteristics of the at- mospheric and hydrologic processes involved in flash-flooding and the changing soci- etal needs provide a tremendous challenge to traditional flood forecasting and warning concepts. In fact, the targets of these systems are traditionally localised like urbanised sectors or hydraulic structures. Given the small spatial scale that characterises flash floods and the development of dispersed urbanisation, transportation, green tourism and water sports, human lives and property are exposed to flash flood risk in a scat- tered manner. This must be taken into consideration in flash flood warning strategies and the investigated region should be considered as a whole and every section of the drainage network as a potential target for hydrological warnings. Radar technology offers the potential to provide information describing rain intensities almost contin- uously in time and space. Recent research results indicate that coupling radar infor- mation to distributed hydrologic modelling can provide hydrologic forecasts at all potentially flooded points of a region. Nevertheless, very few flood warning services use radar data more than on a qualitative basis. After a short review of current under- standing in this area, two

Rethinking the relationship between flood risk perception and flood management.

Science.gov (United States)

Birkholz, S; Muro, M; Jeffrey, P; Smith, H M

2014-04-15

Although flood risk perceptions and their concomitant motivations for behaviour have long been recognised as significant features of community resilience in the face of flooding events, there has, for some time now, been a poorly appreciated fissure in the accompanying literature. Specifically, rationalist and constructivist paradigms in the broader domain of risk perception provide different (though not always conflicting) contexts for interpreting evidence and developing theory. This contribution reviews the major constructs that have been applied to understanding flood risk perceptions and contextualises these within broader conceptual developments around risk perception theory and contemporary thinking around flood risk management. We argue that there is a need to re-examine and re-invigorate flood risk perception research, in a manner that is comprehensively underpinned by more constructivist thinking around flood risk management as well as by developments in broader risk perception research. We draw attention to an historical over-emphasis on the cognitive perceptions of those at risk to the detriment of a richer understanding of a wider range of flood risk perceptions such as those of policy-makers or of tax-payers who live outside flood affected areas as well as the linkages between these perspectives and protective measures such as state-supported flood insurance schemes. Conclusions challenge existing understandings of the relationship between risk perception and flood management, particularly where the latter relates to communication strategies and the extent to which those at risk from flooding feel responsible for taking protective actions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Flood Risk, Flood Mitigation, and Location Choice: Evaluating the National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System.

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Qin; Davlasheridze, Meri

2016-06-01

Climate change is expected to worsen the negative effects of natural disasters like floods. The negative impacts, however, can be mitigated by individuals' adjustments through migration and relocation behaviors. Previous literature has identified flood risk as one significant driver in relocation decisions, but no prior study examines the effect of the National Flood Insurance Program's voluntary program-the Community Rating System (CRS)-on residential location choice. This article fills this gap and tests the hypothesis that flood risk and the CRS-creditable flood control activities affect residential location choices. We employ a two-stage sorting model to empirically estimate the effects. In the first stage, individuals' risk perception and preference heterogeneity for the CRS activities are considered, while mean effects of flood risk and the CRS activities are estimated in the second stage. We then estimate heterogeneous marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for the CRS activities by category. Results show that age, ethnicity and race, educational attainment, and prior exposure to risk explain risk perception. We find significant values for the CRS-creditable mitigation activities, which provides empirical evidence for the benefits associated with the program. The marginal WTP for an additional credit point earned for public information activities, including hazard disclosure, is found to be the highest. Results also suggest that water amenities dominate flood risk. Thus, high amenity values may increase exposure to flood risk, and flood mitigation projects should be strategized in coastal regions accordingly. © 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.

Flood Hazard Mapping Assessment for El-Awali River Catchment-Lebanon

Science.gov (United States)

Hdeib, Rouya; Abdallah, Chadi; Moussa, Roger; Hijazi, Samar

2016-04-01

River flooding prediction and flood forecasting has become an essential stage in the major flood mitigation plans worldwide. Delineation of floodplains resulting from a river flooding event requires coupling between a Hydrological rainfall-runoff model to calculate the resulting outflows of the catchment and a hydraulic model to calculate the corresponding water surface profiles along the river main course. In this study several methods were applied to predict the flood discharge of El-Awali River using the available historical data and gauging records and by conducting several site visits. The HEC-HMS Rainfall-Runoff model was built and applied to calculate the flood hydrographs along several outlets on El-Awali River and calibrated using the storm that took place on January 2013 and caused flooding of the major Lebanese rivers and by conducting additional site visits to calculate proper river sections and record witnesses of the locals. The Hydraulic HEC-RAS model was then applied to calculate the corresponding water surface profiles along El-Awali River main reach. Floodplain delineation and Hazard mapping for 10,50 and 100 years return periods was performed using the Watershed Modeling System WMS. The results first show an underestimation of the flood discharge recorded by the operating gauge stations on El-Awali River, whereas, the discharge of the 100 years flood may reach up to 506 m3/s compared by lower values calculated using the traditional discharge estimation methods. Second any flooding of El-Awali River may be catastrophic especially to the coastal part of the catchment and can cause tragic losses in agricultural lands and properties. Last a major floodplain was noticed in Marj Bisri village this floodplain can reach more than 200 meters in width. Overall, performance was good and the Rainfall-Runoff model can provide valuable information about flows especially on ungauged points and can perform a great aid for the floodplain delineation and flood

Phosphorus Dynamics in Long-Term Flooded, Drained, and Reflooded Soils

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juan Tian

2017-07-01

Full Text Available In flooded areas, soils are often exposed to standing water and subsequent drainage, thus over fertilization can release excess phosphorus (P into surface water and groundwater. To investigate P release and transformation processes in flooded alkaline soils, wheat-growing soil and vegetable-growing soil were selected. We flooded-drained-reflooded two soils for 35 d, then drained the soils, and 10 d later reflooded the soils for 17 d. Dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP, soil inorganic P fractions, Olsen P, pH, and Eh in floodwater and pore water were analyzed. The wheat-growing soil had significantly higher floodwater DRP concentrations than vegetable-growing soil, and floodwater DRP in both soils decreased with the number of flooding days. During the reflooding period, DRP in overlying floodwater from both soils was less than 0.87 mg/L, which was 3–25 times less than that during the flooding period. Regardless of flooding or reflooding, pore water DRP decreased with flooding days. The highest concentration of pore water DRP observed at a 5-cm depth. Under the effect of fertilizing and flooding, the risk of vertical P movement in 10–50 cm was enhanced. P diffusion occurred from the top to the bottom of the soils. After flooding, Al-P increased in both soils, and Fe-P, O-P, Ca2-P decreased, while Fe-P, Al-P, and O-P increased after reflooding, When Olsen P in the vegetable-growing soil exceeded 180.7 mg/kg and Olsen P in the wheat-growing soil exceeded 40.8 mg/kg, the concentration of DRP in pore water increased significantly. Our results showed that changes in floodwater and pore water DRP concentrations, soil inorganic P fractions, and Olsen P are significantly affected by fertilizing and flooding; therefore, careful fertilizer management should be employed on flooded soils to avoid excess P loss.

The analysis on the flood property of Weihe River in 2003

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liu Longqing; Jiang Xinhui

2004-01-01

From the end of Aug to Oct in 2003, it occurred a serious rainfall in the Weihe River --the largest tributary of Yellow River. The rainfall is rare in the history with long duration in the Weihe River valley so that 5 successive floods have formed at the controlling hydrological station-Huaxian station. Those floods overflow the beach, broke the dykes and flood the big area of Lower Weihe River. The natural adversity made near 200.000 populations leave their homeland the serious economic losses. The durations of the floods are long, the water levels are high and the volume of floods is largeness, which is rare in the history to a large extent. The flood peak at Huaxian station is up to 3570 m 3 /s, which is the first biggest peak since 1992. In recent years, owing to the fact that probability of the big flood on Weihe River was rare, the main river was withered clearly, propagation time of flood is lengthened and the discharge flowing over the floodplain was only 800-1000 m 3 /s. The water producing areas of those floods were in the area with little sediment production and the sediment content of the river is lower. As a result, the main river is eroded, the discharge ability of the river course becomes big gradually and the discharge flowing over the floodplain recovers above 2000 m 3 /s. From the analyses of flood components and flood progress, the conclusion is: the sediment deposit and the rising of channel bed, the withering of the main river, the decreasing of the discharge flowing over the floodplain, the increasing of the large peak whittling rate and the prolonging of the propagation duration, all have become the universal appearance of the rivers in arid and half arid districts. The appearance is extremely easily to create the serious calamity in the big flood and the flood law in local area should be researched further.(Author)

Regional early flood warning system: design and implementation

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, L. C.; Yang, S. N.; Kuo, C. L.; Wang, Y. F.

2017-12-01

This study proposes a prototype of the regional early flood inundation warning system in Tainan City, Taiwan. The AI technology is used to forecast multi-step-ahead regional flood inundation maps during storm events. The computing time is only few seconds that leads to real-time regional flood inundation forecasting. A database is built to organize data and information for building real-time forecasting models, maintaining the relations of forecasted points, and displaying forecasted results, while real-time data acquisition is another key task where the model requires immediately accessing rain gauge information to provide forecast services. All programs related database are constructed in Microsoft SQL Server by using Visual C# to extracting real-time hydrological data, managing data, storing the forecasted data and providing the information to the visual map-based display. The regional early flood inundation warning system use the up-to-date Web technologies driven by the database and real-time data acquisition to display the on-line forecasting flood inundation depths in the study area. The friendly interface includes on-line sequentially showing inundation area by Google Map, maximum inundation depth and its location, and providing KMZ file download of the results which can be watched on Google Earth. The developed system can provide all the relevant information and on-line forecast results that helps city authorities to make decisions during typhoon events and make actions to mitigate the losses.

The Bisagno stream catchment (Genoa, Italy) and its major floods: geomorphic and land use variations in the last three centuries

Science.gov (United States)

Faccini, Francesco; Paliaga, Guido; Piana, Pietro; Sacchini, Alessandro; Watkins, Charles

2016-11-01

The city of Genoa (Liguria, Italy) and the Bisagno Valley are affected by frequent floods, often with loss of human lives. Historically characterised by high flood hazards, the Bisagno Valley was recently affected by a flood event on 9 October 2014, less than three years after the tragic flood event of 4 November 2011 when six people died, including two children. In the last 50 years, four destructive floods occurred in the Bisagno Valley, in addition to some other events that caused significant damage and economic losses. This paper examines the three largest flood events in terms of intensity and ground effects which affected the Bisagno Valley in the last three centuries: the flood of 25 October 1822, well documented by contemporary sources, the flood of 8 October 1970, undoubtedly the most tragic on record, and the very recent event of 9 October 2014. For this purpose scientific and historical-geographical methodologies were adopted, the latter particularly useful for the reconstruction of the flood event of 1822 and the landscape history of the Bisagno Valley in the nineteenth century. This comparison shows that the Bisagno Valley is characterised by climatic and landform features that have been making the flood events historically common in the area. However, recent climate change and land-use variations, including some major modifications of the catchment basin, have progressively determined a decrease of the concentration time and an increase of runoff, solid transport, and flood hazard. Consequently, in recent decades a growth in the number of flood events occurred, to the extent that the Bisagno today is a famous case study on an international scale.

Evaluation methodology for flood damage reduction by preliminary water release from hydroelectric dams

Science.gov (United States)

Ando, T.; Kawasaki, A.; Koike, T.

2017-12-01

IPCC AR5 (2014) reported that rainfall in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since 1901, and it is claimed that warmer climate will increase the risk of floods. In contrast, world water demand is forecasted to exceed a sustainable supply by 40 percent by 2030. In order to avoid this expectable water shortage, securing new water resources has become an utmost challenge. However, flood risk prevention and the secure of water resources are contradictory. To solve this problem, we can use existing hydroelectric dams not only as energy resources but also for flood control. However, in case of Japan, hydroelectric dams take no responsibility for it, and benefits have not been discussed accrued by controlling flood by hydroelectric dams, namely by using preliminary water release from them. Therefore, our paper proposes methodology for assessing those benefits. This methodology has three stages as shown in Fig. 1. First, RRI model is used to model flood events, taking account of the probability of rainfall. Second, flood damage is calculated using assets in inundation areas multiplied by the inundation depths generated by that RRI model. Third, the losses stemming from preliminary water release are calculated, and adding them to flood damage, overall losses are calculated. We can evaluate the benefits by changing the volume of preliminary release. As a result, shown in Fig. 2, the use of hydroelectric dams to control flooding creates 20 billion Yen benefits, in the probability of three-day-ahead rainfall prediction of the assumed maximum rainfall in Oi River, in the Shizuoka Pref. of Japan. As the third priority in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, `investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience - public and private investment in disaster risk prevention and reduction through structural and non-structural measures' was adopted. The accuracy of rainfall prediction is the key factor in maximizing the benefits

Independent, rapid and targeted loss of highly repetitive DNA in natural and synthetic allopolyploids of Nicotiana tabacum

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Renny-Byfield, S.; Kovařík, Aleš; Chester, M.; Nichols, R.A.; Macas, Jiří; Novák, Petr; Leitch, A.R.

2012-01-01

Roč. 7, č. 5 (2012), e36963 E-ISSN 1932-6203 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GAP501/10/0208; GA MŠk OC10037 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z50040702; CEZ:AV0Z50510513 Keywords : chromosome evolution * repetitive DNA * allopolyploid Subject RIV: BO - Biophysics; EB - Genetics ; Molecular Biology (BC-A) Impact factor: 3.730, year: 2012

Floods

Science.gov (United States)

Floods are common in the United States. Weather such as heavy rain, thunderstorms, hurricanes, or tsunamis can ... is breached, or when a dam breaks. Flash floods, which can develop quickly, often have a dangerous ...

Realistic modelling of external flooding scenarios - A multi-disciplinary approach

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brinkman, J.L.

2014-01-01

Extreme phenomena, such as storm surges or high river water levels, may endanger the safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) by inundation of the plant site with subsequent damage on safety-related buildings. Flooding may result in simultaneous failures of safety-related components, such as service water pumps and electrical equipment. In addition, the accessibility of the plant may be impeded due to flooding of the plant environment. These consequences are so severe that, (re)assessments of flood risk and flood protection measures should be based on accurate state-of-the-art methods. Dutch nuclear regulations require that a nuclear power plant shall withstand all external initiating events with a return period lower than one million years. For external flooding, this requirement is the basis of the so-called nuclear design level (nucleair ontwerp peil, NOP) of the buildings for external flooding, i.e. the water level at which a system - among others, the nuclear island and the ultimate heat sink - should still function properly. In determining the NOP, the mean water level, wave height and wave behaviour during storm surges are taken into account. This concept could also be used to implement external flooding in a PSA, by assuming that floods exceeding NOP levels directly lead to core damage. However, this straightforward modelling ignores some important aspects: the first is the mitigating effect of the external flood protection as dikes or dunes; the second aspect is that although water levels lower than NOP will not directly lead to core damage, they could do so indirectly as a result of combinations of system loss by flooding and random failure of required safety systems that have to bring the plant in a safe, stable state. Time is a third aspect: failure mechanisms need time to develop and time (via duration of the flood) determines the amount of water on site. This paper describes a PSA approach that takes the (structural) reliability of the external defences

[Social and environmental vulnerability, flooding and repercussions on public health in underdeveloped regions: the case of the state of Alagoas, Brazil].

Science.gov (United States)

Freire, Neison Cabral Ferreira; Bonfim, Cristine Vieira do; Natenzon, Claudia Eleonor

2014-09-01

The scope of this article is to analyze the social and environmental vulnerability of the population affected by disasters adopting the floods that occurred in the State of Alagoas in 2010 as a case study. For this, research was conducted in the Scielo and Medline databases as well as books, dissertations and theses. In addition, newspaper articles published in the local and national press about these floods were located and examined. A visit was made to some of the individuals who were affected by the flood and subsequently housed in the Santa Fé Prison Colony located in the municipality of União dos Palmares in the State of Alagoas. Among other aspects, the vulnerability is a consequence of the precarious living conditions of this population. However, even among the vulnerable there are some groups that are even more vulnerable without any possibility of changing a situation of chronic repetition of the disaster, perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty and precarious living conditions.

The flash flood of October 2011 in the Magra River basin (Italy): rainstorm characterisation and flood response analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Marchi, Lorenzo; Boni, Giorgio; Cavalli, Marco; Comiti, Francesco; Crema, Stefano; Lucía, Ana; Marra, Francesco; Zoccatelli, Davide

2013-04-01

On 25 October 2011, the Magra River, a stream of northwest Italy outflowing into the Ligurian Sea, was affected by a flash flood, which caused severe economic damage and loss of lives. The catchment covers an area of 1717 km2, of which 605 km2 are drained by the Vara River, the major tributary of the Magra River. The flood was caused by an intense rainstorm which lasted approximately 20 hours. The most intense phase lasted about 8 hours, with rainfall amounts up to around 500 mm. The largest rainfall depths (greater than 300 mm) occurred in a narrow southwest - northeast oriented belt covering an area of approximately 400 km2. This flash flood was studied by analysing rainstorm characteristics, runoff response and geomorphic effects. The rainfall fields used in the analysis are based on data from the Settepani weather radar antenna (located at around 100 km from the study basin) and the local rain gauge network. Radar observations and raingauge data were merged to obtain rainfall estimates at 30 min with a resolution of 1 km2. River stage and discharge rating curves are available for few cross-sections on the main channels. Post-flood documentation includes the reconstruction of peak discharge by means of topographic surveys and application of the slope-conveyance method in 34 cross-sections, observations on the geomorphic effects of the event - both in the channel network and on the hillslopes - and the assessment of the timing of the flood based on interviews to eyewitnesses. Regional authorities and local administrations contributed to the documentation of the flood by providing hydrometeorological data, civil protection volunteers accounts, photos and videos recorded during and immediately after the flood. A spatially distributed rainfall-runoff model, fed with rainfall estimates obtained by the radar-derived observations, was used to check the consistency of field-derived peak discharges and to derive the time evolution of the flood. The assessment of unit

Flooding Hazards across Southern China and Prospective Sustainability Measures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hai-Min Lyu

2018-05-01

Full Text Available The Yangtze River Basin and Huaihe River Basin in Southern China experienced severe floods 1998 and 2016. The reasons for the flooding hazards include the following two factors: hazardous weather conditions and degradation of the hydrological environment due to anthropogenic activities. This review work investigated the weather conditions based on recorded data, which showed that both 1998 and 2016 were in El Nino periods. Human activities include the degradations of rivers and lakes and the effects caused by the building of the Three Gorges Dam. In addition, the flooding in 2016 had a lower hazard scale than that in 1998 but resulted in larger economic losses than that of 1998. To mitigate urban waterlogging caused by flooding hazards, China proposed a new strategy named Spongy City (SPC in 2014. SPC promotes sustainable city development so that a city has the resilience to adapt to climate change, to mitigate the impacts of waterlogging caused by extreme rainfall events. The countermeasures used to tackle the SPC construction-related problems, such as local inundation, water resource shortage, storm water usage, and water pollution control, are proposed for city management to improve the environment.

Natural hazards and motivation for mitigation behavior: people cannot predict the affect evoked by a severe flood.

Science.gov (United States)

Siegrist, Michael; Gutscher, Heinz

2008-06-01

Past research indicates that personal flood experience is an important factor in motivating mitigation behavior. It is not fully clear, however, why such experience is so important. This study tested the hypothesis that people without flooding experience underestimate the negative affect evoked by such an event. People who were affected by a severe recent flood disaster were compared with people who were not affected, but who also lived in flood-prone areas. Face-to-face interviews with open and closed questions were conducted (n= 201). Results suggest that people without flood experience envisaged the consequences of a flood differently from people who had actually experienced severe losses due to a flood. People who were not affected strongly underestimated the negative affect associated with a flood. Based on the results, it can be concluded that risk communication must not focus solely on technical aspects; in order to trigger motivation for mitigation behavior, successful communication must also help people to envisage the negative emotional consequences of natural disasters.

Probabilistic flood extent estimates from social media flood observations

NARCIS (Netherlands)