After 2000 Stože Landslide: Part I – Development in landslide research in Slovenia

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Please check back later for the full article. What are the long-term economic and demographic impacts of disasters? Do disasters caused by natural hazards lead to long-term declines in economic activity, or do they stimulate the local economy because of the added investment and the upgrading of infrastructure? What are the main facets of the economy that are impacted in the long term—population, incomes, employment, other parameters, or none at all? Are the long-term impacts of disasters caused by natural hazards different from those caused by man-made shocks, such as civil wars or terrorist attacks? The type and severity of the natural hazard surely have an effect on the kinds of dynamics experienced after a disaster, but so do the levels of exposure of people and wealth (in the form of man-made infrastructure), and the social and economic vulnerabilities that characterize the affected area. Additionally, one needs to differentiate, when examining long-term impacts, between direct and indirect damage, and whether this distinction assists us in explaining different trajectories. The role of policy in shaping long-term outcomes is potentially very important. While it is difficult to claim significant agreement on any one topic, some intriguing insights have been emerging in recent research. To discuss the long-term economic impact of natural disasters, one must first define impact. A common way to determine this impact is to compare the economy post-disaster to its state prior to the disaster. Some argue that an economy has recovered when it returns to pre-disaster levels. This approach can be misleading as the evidence suggests that, in some cases, economies that were severely impacted by disasters may experience a brief return to pre-disaster levels, occasioned by the boom in reconstruction spending, but then decline back to experience long-term decline associated with the disaster event itself or the fear it has created of future events. It is clear from the above example that the appropriate comparison is to a counterfactual scenario without event. Of course, even more challenging is to identify, or predict, what would have happened had the disaster not occurred. Not surprisingly, the ways in which this counterfactual, disaster-free state is identified may determine the conclusions reached. A minority of observers argue that it is common to see economies and communities reconstructed to a better state than they were pre-disaster (a “build-back-better” scenario), and others conclude that disasters occasioned by natural hazards are benign in the long term, at least at a large enough scale (potentially at the country level). On the other hand, very poor countries, very small countries, or regional economies within countries can all experience significant and very prolonged declines in economic activity in the aftermath of catastrophic natural hazard events. These adverse developments can be experienced as long-term declines in populations (e.g., New Orleans, post-2005), long-term declines in incomes and employment (e.g., Kobe, post-1995), very long-term declines in asset prices (the Dust-Bowl midwestern United States, post-1930s), or shifts in the sectors of economic activity (San Francisco, post-1906).

A crucial step in measuring the resilience of railway infrastructure is to quantify the extent of its vulnerability to natural hazards. In this paper, we analyze the vulnerability of the German railway network to four types of natural hazards that regularly cause disruptions in German rail operations: floods, mass movements, slope fires, and tree falls. Using daily train traffic data matched with various data on disruptive events, we quantify the extent to which these four types of natural hazard reduce daily train traffic volumes. With a negative binomial count data regression, we find evidence that the track segments of the German railway network are most vulnerable to floods, followed by mass movements and tree-fall events. On average, floods reduce traffic on track segments by 19% of the average daily train traffic, mass movements by 16%, and tree fall by 4%. Moreover, when more than one type of natural hazard affects the track segment on the same day, train traffic on that segment falls by 34% of the average train traffic. Slope fires have an ambiguous and nonrobust effect on train traffic due to the reverse causality due to its triggering factors. This is the first study that attempts to rank different natural hazards according to their impact on railway traffic. The results have implications for the selection of resilience strategy and can help prioritize policy measures.

A natural hazard event that highly impacted a society might trigger a wave of post-disaster research analysis, which looks into the cause of the disaster, the types of impact, or any lessons learned to prevent similar events in the future. In short, post-disaster research contains valuable knowledge that should be utilized in disaster risk management. However, in the past 70 years, the scientific community published around 600,000 articles on hydro-hazards, such as floods, droughts, and landslides. Finding articles that describe specific disaster events and synthesizing their knowledge is not humanly possible anymore due to near exponentially increasing numbers of publications. However, recent advancements in large language models allow the analysis and extraction of described disaster events in the scientific literature.Here we make use of the Wealth over Woe scientific abstract dataset (Stein et al. 2024), with abstracts that were automatically annotated for hydro-hazards and geolocation.  It allows us to track publication trends and to identify disaster events that triggered a wave of new research. We additionally make use of the large language model Llama 70B to extract specific hazard events mentioned in each abstract (e.g. 2003 summer drought in Europe, Pakistan flood in 2010, 2002 Elbe flood, etc.) as well as other described details surrounding the event.While we know that hydro-hazard research is biased against low-income countries, exceptional disaster events can shift research priorities for several years. The additional funding can support valuable local post-disaster research. The named event recognition can therefore help us answer questions such as: What kind of hydro-hazards are studied in detail and where? What are the key research foci for post-disaster analysis? And are there regional differences to these answers?

<p>The prediction of debris flows is relevant because this type of natural hazard can pose a threat to humans and infrastructure. Debris-flow (and landslide) early warning systems often rely on rainfall intensity–duration (ID) thresholds. Multiple competing methods exist for the determination of such ID thresholds but have not been objectively and thoroughly compared at multiple scales, and a validation and uncertainty assessment is often missing in their formulation. As a consequence, updating, interpreting, generalizing and comparing rainfall thresholds is challenging. Here, we present the findings of Hirschberg et al. (2021), which focused on (i) uncertainties related to ID thresholds, (ii) differences in local compared to regional ID thresholds, and (iii) how prediction can potentially be improved using statistical learning algorithms. The findings are of interest for debris-flow (and landslide) early-warning developers.</p><p>We use a 17-year record of rainfall and 67 debris flows in a Swiss Alpine catchment (Illgraben) to determine ID thresholds and associated uncertainties as a function of record du- ration. This included comparing two methods for rainfall threshold definition based on linear regression and/or true-skill-statistic maximization. The main difference between these approaches and the well-known frequentist method is that non-triggering rainfall events were additionally considered for obtaining ID-threshold parameters. Depending on the method applied, the ID-threshold parameters and their uncertainties differed significantly. We found that 25 debris flows are sufficient to constrain uncertainties in ID-threshold parameters to ±30% for our study site. We further demonstrated the change in predictive performance of the two methods if a regional landslide data set with a regional rainfall product was used instead of a local one with local rainfall measurements. Hence, an important finding is that the ideal method for ID- threshold determination depends on the available landslide and rainfall data sets. Furthermore, for the local data set we tested if the ID-threshold performance can be increased by considering other rainfall properties (e.g. antecedent rainfall, maximum intensity) in a multivariate statistical learning algorithm based on decision trees (random forest). The highest predictive power was reached when the peak 30 min rainfall intensity was added to the ID variables, while no improvement was achieved by considering antecedent rainfall for debris-flow predictions in Illgraben. Although the increase in predictive performance with the random forest model over the classical ID threshold was small, such a framework could be valuable for future studies if more predictors are available from measured or modelled data.</p>

This article examines the landslide hazard mapping in Leoutikhola watershed of Dhankuta district, eastern hills of Nepal. The hills are regarded as one of the most vulnerable areas in the world. The area is prone to different types of natural hazards such as landslide, debris flow, gully erosion, mass wasting, and flooding. Various studies pointed out biophysical and socioeconomic factors are more responsible to landslide hazards in the hill-slope environment. This paper argues that the rainfall intensity, unscientific methods of cultivation and lack of environment friendly developmental activities in steep slope are some of the major driving factors to landslide in the Leoutikhola watershed area. Leoutikhola watershed area has been suffering from different types of natural hazards such as landslide, debris flow, gully erosion, mass wasting and flooding. Field verification and satellite imageries are the major sources for the information to analyze. Due to its fragile and very weak geological condition, geomorphic hazard is considered more common than other types of hazards which lose massive lives and property in the study area. The field observation and local people perception indicate a large amount of budget required to mitigate natural hazards in this area especially for landslide. In this context, this paper attempts to portray the landslide hazard zonation and susceptibility mapping correlated with various factors. For this purpose, bivariate statistical index and Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) tools are used to calculate weighted values. The overall parameters indicate that in the series (-4.2 to 4.58) of five different hazard zones like very low, low, moderate, high and very high. The paper concludes that hazard determination calculated values indicate to 4.2 to -2.09, -2.09 to -1.0, -1.0 to-0.05, -0.05 to 1.24 and 1.24 to 4.58 respectively in the range of quartile series.

Various types of natural hazards are often compared, in terms of danger or frequency of recurrence. Such analyses are, among other things, influenced by the character and quality of the database used. The Peruvian DesInventar database is homogenous and, thus, serves as a useful tool for describing the significance of landslides and evaluating the role of the El Nino Effect among different causes of catastrophes. During the 1971–2009 period, the most frequent type of natural hazard in the Ancash Department was alluvion (a local term for debris flow), followed by floods and extreme rainfall. If we group various forms of mass movement together, they comprise a dominant portion among natural hazards. A major portion of natural hazards are generated by the direct impacts of extreme hydrometeorological events. Considering the influence of El Nino episodes, it is important to emphasize the fact that 41% of all catastrophes caused by extreme weather, during the observed period, were generated by this phenomenon. This research was conducted within the framework of IPL Project M 129 (Evaluation of natural hazards associated with rapid glacial retreat in Cordillera Blanca, Peru) and theWorld Centre of Excellence on Landslide Risk Reduction, registered in the Czech Republic (Landslide field research and capacity building through international collaboration). Financial support was provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, project no. MSM0021620831 “Geographic Systems and Risk Processes in the Context of Global Change and European Integration”.

The Post-Natural Disasters People Losses and Damage Simulator (Ḧ-Simulator)

China is a vast country frequently impacted by multiple natural hazards. All natural disasters have been reported in China, except volcanic eruptions. Almost every region in China is threatened by at least one type of natural hazard, and the rural areas are most vulnerable, with fewer resources and less developed disaster protective measures as well as lower levels of preparedness. In the first 30 years since its establishment in 1949, the Chinese government, hindered by resource constraints, encouraged local communities to be responsible for disaster response. As the country’s economy grew exponentially, after it opened its doors to the world in the late 1970s, China’s natural hazard governance (NHG) system quickly became more top-down, with the government leading the way for planning, coordinating, directing, and allocating resources for natural disasters. The development of China’s NHG is linked to the evolution of its ideologies, legislation system, and organizational structures for disaster management. Ancient China’s disaster management was undergirded by the ideology that one accepted one’s fate passively in the event of a disaster. In contemporary China, three ideologies guide the NHG: (a) passive disaster relief characterized by “help oneself by engaging in production”; (b) active disaster management characterized by “emergency management”; and (c) optimized disaster risk governance characterized by “multiple stakeholders working together.” Meanwhile, the NHG legislation and systems have become more open, transparent, and integrated one over time. Evidenced by the unprecedented growth of social organizations and private companies that engaged in disaster-related activities during and after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, discussions on integrating bottom-up capacities with the top-down system have increased recently. The Chinese government started purchasing services from social organizations and engaging them in building disaster model communities (officially known as “Comprehensive Disaster Reduction Demonstration Communities”) in recent years. These are, potentially, two specific ways for social organizations to contribute to China’s NHG system development.

A comparative assessment and analysis of risk of environmental management across the African Union has been carried out. It is mainly characterized by two types of natural hazards: lithospheric — earthquakes, volcanism and related processes, and hydrometeorological — droughts, floods, accompanying landslides and soil degradation caused by global climate change and anthropogenic changes in the landscapes. A great hazard for tourist business, which is a basis of economy of island states with high enough level of development, is a sharp rise in the level of World Ocean as a result of melting of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. The sector most exposed to natural hazards in the African Union is agriculture, which suffers from soil erosion and degradation, droughts, desertifi cation and landslides. Vast areas of the African continent are at low risk of exploitation because they are uninhabited and undeveloped. Th ese are pristine areas with naturally developed landscapes where extreme natural processes and phenomena certainly occur, but there is simply no one and nothing to affect them. Good disaster resilience is related to the overall high level of economic development of the countries — Seychelles, Mauritius, South Africa, the political will of the governance structures and well-established security systems — Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and the growing infl uence of private capital in recent years on national disaster protection policies — Nigeria, Ghana, Cape Verde. Countries with low disaster resilience are the poorest countries in the world, with widespread famine, epidemics, forced migration due to ongoing military conflicts and coups d’état, poverty, etc. Correlation and regression analysis for the countries of the African Union has shown the dependence of the risk of environmental management coeffi cient on nominal GDP per capita per year, although the correlation coefficientis rather low. The highest risk is observed in the poorest countries that are unable to cope with natural disasters on their own, where natural hazards are widespread — Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Eritrea. Low risk is ensured in countries with developed economies and eff ective government — Mauritius, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, etc.

Understanding the location of risk to natural hazards, namely the areas of high exposure and vulnerability is a major priority that was identified by the Sendai framework for Disaster Reduction 2015–2030 in order to reach substantial reduction of disaster risk. It is also a necessary decision-making tool for disaster mitigation policy-makers in Japan and around the world. This paper successfully develops a simple methodology using only open data to build the first large-scale (whole country), fine resolution (sub-municipal level) social vulnerability analysis in the context of five different types of natural hazards (earthquake, tsunami, storm surge, flooding and landslide). The result is then compared to an indicator of exposure of population to these hazards in Japan in order to propose a representation of disaster risk. Results show that vulnerability in Japan is highly heterogeneous with urban/rural and north/south fractures. Combining the social vulnerability index with exposure analysis, results show a wide variety of spatial patterns of risk areas in Japan.

Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facilities must comply with DOE Order 420.1C Facility Safety, which requires that all such facilities review their natural phenomena hazards (NPH) assessments no less frequently than every ten years. The Order points the reader to Standard DOE-STD-1020-2012. In addition to providing a discussion of the applicable evaluation criteria, the Standard references other documents, including ANSI/ANS-2.29-2008 and NUREG-2117. These documents provide supporting criteria and approaches for evaluating the need to update an existing probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). All of the documents are consistent at a high level regarding the general conceptual criteria that should be considered. However, none of the documents provides step-by-step detailed guidance on the required or recommended approach for evaluating the significance of new information and determining whether or not an existing PSHA should be updated. Further, all of the conceptual approaches and criteria given in these documents deal with changes that may have occurred in the knowledge base that might impact the inputs to the PSHA, the calculated hazard itself, or the technical basis for the hazard inputs. Given that the DOE Order is aimed at achieving and assuring the safety of nuclear facilities—which is a function not only of the level of the seismic hazard but also the capacity of the facility to withstand vibratory ground motions—the inclusion of risk information in the evaluation process would appear to be both prudent and in line with the objectives of the Order. The purpose of this white paper is to describe a risk-informed methodology for evaluating the need for an update of an existing PSHA consistent with the DOE Order. While the development of the proposed methodology was undertaken as a result of assessments for specific SDC-3 facilities at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and it is expected that the application at INL will provide a demonstration of the methodology, there is potential for general applicability to other facilities across the DOE complex. As such, both a general methodology and a specific approach intended for INL are described in this document. The general methodology proposed in this white paper is referred to as the “seismic hazard periodic review methodology,” or SHPRM. It presents a graded approach for SDC-3, SDC-4 and SDC-5 facilities that can be applied in any risk-informed regulatory environment once risk-objectives appropriate for the framework are developed. While the methodology was developed for seismic hazard considerations, it can also be directly applied to other types of natural hazards.

Building typology classification and earthquake vulnerability scale of Central and South Asian building stock

Landslides are the most frequent type of natural hazard in the Azores archipelago, primarily due to the volcanic nature and geomorphologic features of the islands. The NATHA (Natural Hazards in Azores) database is a repository of documents reporting those natural disaster events that have occurred on the Azores since their settlement in the mid-fifteenth century. This work presents and explores the landslide events that have occurred on São Miguel Island in the period 1900–2020. A total of 236 landslide events were catalogued. The temporal distribution of the landslide events reveals a higher concentration of events after 1996, which is related to a change in the rainfall regime but also to the increasing dissemination of information. The influence of climate change on landslide occurrence is demonstrated for the first time in the Azores. The landslide events catalogued in the NATHA database were responsible for 82 fatalities, 41 injuries and 305 people made homeless, while 66 buildings were partially or completely destroyed. The spatial distribution of landslide events shows that Povoação is the municipality most prone to landslide occurrence as well as to landslide impact. Rainfall was the triggering factor of most landslide events (70%) on São Miguel Island, and landslide events have been most frequent during the wettest months of the year from November to March. The obtained results demonstrate the need of landslides prevention and preparedness programs in specific areas of São Miguel Island.

Background:Emergency preparedness at all levels (individuals and communities) is the corner stone of effective response to the increasing trends of global disasters due to man-made and natural hazards. It is determined by different factors, including (among others) past direct and indirect exposures to hazards. This study was carried out in Dire Dawa town, Ethiopia, which in the past experienced frequent flooding events, yet dearth of information exists about preparedness in the area. The aim of the study was to assess the levels of emergency preparedness for flood hazards at households and communities levels.Methods:The study was conducted in a qualitative approach and was conducted in Dire Dawa town, which has been divided into nine administrative-units called Kebeles. Two focus group discussions were held in two of these units (Kebele-05 and 06), each focus group comprising twelve people (all above 18 years of age), and in total 24 people (13 females and 11 males) took part in the study. Open ended questions were used that could guide the discussions, and the discussions were audio-taped and transcribed. The results were translated from local language to English and qualitatively presented.Results:The findings of focus group discussions showed that the local government in collaboration with the federal government built the flood protection dams in areas where flood hazards have been thought to be repeatedly wreaking havoc, specifically after the flood disaster of the year 2006. In addition, in Kebele-05, where one Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) was operating on flood hazards prevention and mitigation program, some non-structural emergency preparedness measures were undertaken by the communities. These non-structural measures (the major ones) entailed: establishment of committees recruited from residents and training them to raise awareness among communities on emergency preparedness; some residents made changes to their own houses (retrofitted) and put sandbags around their houses to temporarily protect the flooding; establishment of communication channels between communities to alarm each other in the event of flood disaster; and reforestation of the already deforested mountainous areas surrounding the town. However, concerns were raised by study participants about strengths of the constructed flood protection dams. Furthermore, the non-structural emergency preparedness measures identified by this study were not comprehensive; for example, residents were not trained in first aid, first aid kits were not provided, there was no linkage being established between communities and health facilities so as to provide emergency medical care to victims in the event of flood disaster. Discussion: The findings of this study concur with some of the previous quantitative studies’ results in that the past direct and indirect disaster experiences invoke preparedness intention and actual preparedness for flood hazards at individuals, communities and organizations levels. The only one quantitative and behavioral based study conducted thus far in Dire Dawa town reported the strong association of past flood disaster experience with household emergency preparedness. Among the residents there was a tendency to rely on the dams to be constructed with “good quality” and “higher strength” than making preparedness efforts on their own at their households. Structural measures such as building of dams, dikes, levees, and channel improvements could be means of mitigation measures; however, solely relying on these measures could have far reaching consequences.Conclusions: To mitigate flood hazards, dams were built and in addition, in Kebele-05 where an NGO was operating, some non-structural emergency preparedness measures were undertaken. In the course of construction of flood protection dams, ensuring communities’ involvement is needed; and at the same time undertaking comprehensive non-structural emergency preparedness measures in all Kebeles is highly recommended.Key words: Emergency, Preparedness, Flood, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.

2 1. In this the fourth year of the Decade, New Zealand has put in place a number of legislative vehicles to achieve the immediate IDNDR targets, and to work towards the long-term goals of the Caring for the Earth strategy and Agenda 21. 2. New Zealand has a system of “nested” plans at all levels of government, dealing with anticipatory measures and provisions guiding communities in their preparation and response to natural disasters. 3. Individual and community responsibility for developing strategies are encouraged by school education programmes, active civil defence volunteers at a local level, regional planning for facilitating and coordinating response, and national coordination in the event of major disasters. In addition, any emergency actions carried out in the event of a natural disaster must be remedied. 4. There is close collaboration between all levels of planning. However, as the Acts are implemented, there will be different styles of collaboration not yet apparent. 5. Protection of natural habitats is mainly provided for in the policy statements and plans at the regional and local levels of planning under the Resource Management Act. Civil Defence Plans would be developed taking this into account. 6. Improved understanding of natural processes requires an ongoing process of public education and explanation of issues, objectives and policies about natural hazards. 7. The Resource Management Act provides mainly for the avoidance of natural hazards in planning for use of natural and physical resources. It is based on river catchments, an important IUCN requirement for sub-national planning. The Civil Defence Act reinforces the need for individuals to develop a sense of personal responsibility for avoiding and mitigating the effects of natural hazards. Over the Decade, there should gradually be less government regulation of land uses and activities and less government funding in the event of individual disasters. 8. There are concerns that as government funding of programmes diminishes, there will not be a corresponding increase in private investment in insurance, research and collaboration. In the event of natural disaster occuring before alternative systems are developed, individuals and communities may suffer hardship.