This paper presents recommended methodologies for the quantitative analysis of landslide hazard, vulnerability and risk at different spatial scales (site-specific, local, regional and national), as well as for the verification and validation of the results. The methodologies described focus on the evaluation of the probabilities of occurrence of different landslide types with certain characteristics. Methods used to determine the spatial distribution of landslide intensity, the characterisation of the elements at risk, the assessment of the potential degree of damage and the quantification of the vulnerability of the elements at risk, and those used to perform the quantitative risk analysis are also described. The paper is intended for use by scientists and practising engineers, geologists and other landslide experts.

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Recommendations for the quantitative analysis of landslide risk

Induced seismicity associated with Enhanced Geothermal Systems

http://home.ustc.edu.cn/~ly2014/Advances_in_Geosciences/Reading%20materials%20for%20Week%202/Group6-Characterisation%20of%20the%20Basel%201%20enhanced%20geothermal%20system.pdf

Characterisation of the Basel 1 enhanced geothermal system

Models capable of estimating losses in future earthquakes are of fundamental importance for emergency planners and for the insurance and reinsurance industries. One of the main ingredients in a loss model is an accurate, transparent and conceptually sound algorithm to assess the seismic vulnerability of the building stock and indeed many tools and methodologies have been proposed over the past 30 years for this purpose. This paper takes a look at some of the most significant contributions in the field of vulnerability assessment and identifies the key advantages and disadvantages of these procedures in order to distinguish the main characteristics of an ideal methodology.

/pdf/development-of-seismic-vulnerability-assessment-1xbax4ru36.pdf

Development of seismic vulnerability assessment methodologies over the past 30 years

Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source that can be found in abundance on our planet. Only a small fraction of it is currently converted to electrical power, though in recent years installed geothermal capacity has increased considerably all over the world. This review focuses on Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), which represent a path for turning the enormous resources provided by geothermal energy into electricity for human consumption efficiently and on a large scale. The paper presents a general overview of this ever-expanding technology from its origins to the current state of the art. The Geodynamics plant in Habanero (Australia), which started up on 2 May 2013, is the first privately-run commercial EGS plant to produce electricity on a large scale. Thanks to the technological development of EGS in recent years, the future looks bright for such plants in the decades to come.

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS): A review

Earthquake losses due to ground failure

Control of hazard due to seismicity induced by a hot fractured rock geothermal project

Modelling liquefaction-induced building damage in earthquake loss estimation

Models capable of estimating losses in future earthquakes are of fundamental importance for emergency planners, for the insurance and reinsurance industries, and for code drafters. Constructing a loss model for a city, region or country involves compiling databases of earthquake activity, ground conditions, attenuation equations, building stock and infrastructure exposure, and vulnerability characteristics of the exposed inventory, all of which have large associated uncertainties. Many of these uncertainties can be classified as epistemic, implying—at least in theory—that they can be reduced by acquiring additional data or improved understanding of the physical processes. The effort and cost involved in refining the definition of each component of a loss model can be very large, for which reason it is useful to identify the relative impact on the calculated losses due to variations in these components. A mechanically sound displacement-based approach to loss estimation is applied to a test case of buildings along the northern side of the Sea of Marmara in Turkey. Systematic variations of the parameters defining the demand (ground motion) and the capacity (vulnerability) are used to identify the relative impacts on the resulting losses, from which it is found that the influence of the epistemic uncertainty in the capacity is larger than that of the demand for a single earthquake scenario. Thus, the importance of earthquake loss models which allow the capacity parameters to be customized to the study area under consideration is highlighted. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The impact of epistemic uncertainty on an earthquake loss model

Loss estimation from future earthquakes is of growing importance in planning earthquake protection strategies in high-risk areas. Loss models based on the spectral displacement approach are now widely used because of generally acknowledged deficiencies in earlier approaches using macroseismic intensity or peak ground-motion parameters. However, there has been to date rather little earthquake damage data by which the new generation of models can be assessed and which can be used to calibrate the parameters involved. The availability of several detailed damage surveys carried out following the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey, provides a rare opportunity for such an assessment. In this paper the losses which would be predicted from two different approaches to loss assessment – one using predicted macroseismic intensity, the other using the spectral displacement method – are compared with actual observed losses in the Kocaeli event at two different locations where surveys were carried out. One of these sites was very close to the surface fault rupture (< 3 km distance), the other at a distance of about 4.5 km. It is shown that the predictive methods available generally overestimated the losses at these distances, and a number of possible reasons for these discrepancies are considered. The sensitivity of loss estimates to variations in the key parameters governing the estimation in each case are explored, in particular with respect to modifications in the parameters of the attenuation relationships and the vulnerability parameters. The implications of these results for estimating future losses are discussed.

Juliet Bird

Papers

Earthquake losses due to ground failure

Control of hazard due to seismicity induced by a hot fractured rock geothermal project

Modelling liquefaction-induced building damage in earthquake loss estimation

The impact of epistemic uncertainty on an earthquake loss model

Comparing Loss Estimation with Observed Damage: A Study of the 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake in Turkey