•Journal•ISSN: 1561-8633
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Copernicus Publications
About: Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences is an academic journal published by Copernicus Publications. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Landslide & Flood myth. It has an ISSN identifier of 1561-8633. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 4365 publications have been published receiving 130744 citations. The journal is also known as: NHESS (Online) & NHESS (Print).
Topics: Landslide, Flood myth, Geology, Environmental science, Population
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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TL;DR: A review of the state-of-the-art and research directions of economic flood damage assessment can be found in this paper, where the authors identify research directions for economic flood risk assessment.
Abstract: . Damage assessments of natural hazards supply crucial information to decision support and policy development in the fields of natural hazard management and adaptation planning to climate change. Specifically, the estimation of economic flood damage is gaining greater importance as flood risk management is becoming the dominant approach of flood control policies throughout Europe. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art and identifies research directions of economic flood damage assessment. Despite the fact that considerable research effort has been spent and progress has been made on damage data collection, data analysis and model development in recent years, there still seems to be a mismatch between the relevance of damage assessments and the quality of the available models and datasets. Often, simple approaches are used, mainly due to limitations in available data and knowledge on damage mechanisms. The results of damage assessments depend on many assumptions, e.g. the selection of spatial and temporal boundaries, and there are many pitfalls in economic evaluation, e.g. the choice between replacement costs or depreciated values. Much larger efforts are required for empirical and synthetic data collection and for providing consistent, reliable data to scientists and practitioners. A major shortcoming of damage modelling is that model validation is scarcely performed. Uncertainty analyses and thorough scrutiny of model inputs and assumptions should be mandatory for each damage model development and application, respectively. In our view, flood risk assessments are often not well balanced. Much more attention is given to the hazard assessment part, whereas damage assessment is treated as some kind of appendix within the risk analysis. Advances in flood damage assessment could trigger subsequent methodological improvements in other natural hazard areas with comparable time-space properties.
984 citations
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Abstract: . Landslides are a ubiquitous hazard in terrestrial environments with slopes,
incurring human fatalities in urban settlements, along transport corridors
and at sites of rural industry. Assessment of landslide risk requires
high-quality landslide databases. Recently, global landslide databases have
shown the extent to which landslides impact on society and identified areas
most at risk. Previous global analysis has focused on rainfall-triggered
landslides over short ∼ 5-year observation periods. This paper presents
spatiotemporal analysis of a global dataset of fatal non-seismic landslides,
covering the period from January 2004 to December 2016. The data show that in
total 55 997 people were killed in
4862 distinct landslide events. The spatial distribution of landslides
is heterogeneous, with Asia representing the dominant geographical area.
There are high levels of interannual variation in the occurrence of
landslides. Although more active years coincide with recognised patterns of
regional rainfall driven by climate anomalies, climate modes (such as El
Nino–Southern Oscillation) cannot yet be related to landsliding,
requiring a landslide dataset of 30 + years. Our analysis demonstrates that
landslide occurrence triggered by human activity is increasing, in particular
in relation to construction, illegal mining and hill cutting. This supports
notions that human disturbance may be more detrimental to future landslide
incidence than climate.
872 citations
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TL;DR: The authors examines the development over historical time of the meaning and uses of the term resilience and concludes that the modern conception of resilience derives benefit from a rich history of meanings and applications, but that it is dangerous to read to much into the term as a model and a paradigm.
Abstract: . This paper examines the development over historical time of the meaning and uses of the term resilience. The objective is to deepen our understanding of how the term came to be adopted in disaster risk reduction and resolve some of the conflicts and controversies that have arisen when it has been used. The paper traces the development of resilience through the sciences, humanities, and legal and political spheres. It considers how mechanics passed the word to ecology and psychology, and how from there it was adopted by social research and sustainability science. As other authors have noted, as a concept, resilience involves some potentially serious conflicts or contradictions, for example between stability and dynamism, or between dynamic equilibrium (homeostasis) and evolution. Moreover, although the resilience concept works quite well within the confines of general systems theory, in situations in which a systems formulation inhibits rather than fosters explanation, a different interpretation of the term is warranted. This may be the case for disaster risk reduction, which involves transformation rather than preservation of the "state of the system". The article concludes that the modern conception of resilience derives benefit from a rich history of meanings and applications, but that it is dangerous – or at least potentially disappointing – to read to much into the term as a model and a paradigm.
858 citations
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TL;DR: In a case study from the Ecuadorian Andes, logistic regression with stepwise backward variable selection yields lowest error rates and demonstrates the best generalization capabilities.
Abstract: . The predictive power of logistic regression, support vector machines and bootstrap-aggregated classification trees (bagging, double-bagging) is compared using misclassification error rates on independent test data sets. Based on a resampling approach that takes into account spatial autocorrelation, error rates for predicting "present" and "future" landslides are estimated within and outside the training area. In a case study from the Ecuadorian Andes, logistic regression with stepwise backward variable selection yields lowest error rates and demonstrates the best generalization capabilities. The evaluation outside the training area reveals that tree-based methods tend to overfit the data.
531 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, a model of factors influencing levels of human losses from natural hazards at the global scale, for the period 1980-2000, was presented for the United Nations Development Programme as a building stone of the disaster risk index (DRI), which aims at monitoring the evolution of risk.
Abstract: . This paper presents a model of factors influencing levels of human losses from natural hazards at the global scale, for the period 1980–2000. This model was designed for the United Nations Development Programme as a building stone of the Disaster Risk Index (DRI), which aims at monitoring the evolution of risk. Assessing what countries are most at risk requires considering various types of hazards, such as droughts, floods, cyclones and earthquakes. Before assessing risk, these four hazards were modelled using GIS and overlaid with a model of population distribution in order to extract human exposure. Human vulnerability was measured by crossing exposure with selected socio-economic parameters. The model evaluates to what extent observed past losses are related to population exposure and vulnerability. Results reveal that human vulnerability is mostly linked with country development level and environmental quality. A classification of countries is provided, as well as recommendations on data improvement for future use of the model.
462 citations