Natural Hazard

In the late 2000s, Scott Saleska observed an unusual phenomenon in the Amazon rainforest. A severe drought in 2005 led to increased green growth in vast areas of the Amazon, contrary to field researchers’ observations of browning plants and some dying due to the drought. Recent research published in Nature by Shuli Chen, a doctoral ...

Remote sensing is a powerful tool to measure fire’s effects on plant life. How severe was the damage to vegetation? How quickly can a landscape recover? A new project is looking at those questions from a before, during, and after fire perspective, and the Wildland Fire Team at EROS investigates how using different remote sensing ...

In the wake of last month’s disastrous flooding in southern Brazil, researchers are asking residents to use their smartphone cameras to document the damage and high-water marks. The data collected will help scientists map flood risk and inform decisions on where to rebuild. When Lucas George Wendt arrived in Lajeado in late May, the water ...

Enquanto o Rio Grande do Sul ainda vive a tragédia da maior enchente da história, uma das contribuições necessárias para entender toda a catástrofe é o uso de informações a partir de mapas e análises técnicas do que está acontecendo. Como forma de contribuição acadêmica, pesquisadores da UFRGS e colaboradores lançaram o “Repositório de informações ...

A Companhia de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais (CPRM) lançou um mapa interativo que permite visualizar áreas com risco de desastre no Brasil. Nesse sistema, é possível localizar informações sobre áreas com alto e muito alto risco de deslizamentos de terra, inundações, enxurradas e queda de rochas em mais de 1.600 municípios brasileiros. A plataforma interativa ...

NASA’s “Wildfire Digital Twin” project will equip firefighters and wildfire managers with a superior tool for monitoring wildfires and predicting harmful air pollution events and help researchers observe global wildfire trends more precisely. The tool, developed with funding from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and NASA’s FireSense Program, will use artificial intelligence and machine learning ...

This book presents a comprehensive coverage of remote sensing technology used to gather information on 12 types of natural hazards in the terrestrial sphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. It clarifies in detail how to yield spatial and quantitative data on a natural hazard, including its spatial distribution, severity, causes, and the likelihood of occurrence. The ...

Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks have developed a new technology using synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) to detect hazardous sections of open water in frozen rivers in Alaska during winter. This technology can also be applied across the Arctic, where open water zones pose similar dangers. By identifying these open water zones, researchers hope to ...

Wildfires present complex socio-economic and ecological challenges, as they devastate vegetation, endanger communities, and cause extensive environmental, wildlife, and human health impacts. These consequences include severe air pollution and soaring firefighting costs. Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas, which are transition zones between wilderness and human-developed land, are particularly susceptible to wildfires. The risk is heightened due ...

An exceptionally severe storm swept over Zurich on 13 July 2021 shortly before 2 a.m., with howling squalls, constant lightning and torrential rain that awakened people with a start. Benedikt Soja, Professor of Space Geodesy, got little sleep that night. “It was one of the most severe storms I’ve ever witnessed. I woke up in ...

The water cycle looks simple in theory—but human impacts, climate change, and complicated geography mean that in practice, floods and droughts remain hard to predict. To model water on Earth, you need incredibly high-resolution data across an immense expanse, and you need modeling sophisticated enough to account for everything from snowcaps on mountains to soil ...

Wildfire fighting and forest management decisions are potentially being hampered by inaccurate government data that misrepresents forest fuel loads in British Columbia’s Interior, a new study has found. The B.C. government says the provincial wildfire service is working with the study’s lead author and others to close the data gap, which involves “mismatches” between remotely-sensed ...

Unplanned power outages due to environmental conditions (wind, lightning, tree growth, etc.) leave those without power on their own, sometimes for long periods of time. Utility companies lack the ability to predict when forced outages will occur, so no mitigation measures targeting consumers are deployed ahead of time to reduce the impact of an outage. ...

Climate change intensifies disasters, which drives displacement. That can, among many impacts, push internally displaced people from rural areas into urban slums. That in turn raises the risks of forced evictions and secondary urban displacement, as well as increased risks of public health crises, and so on, in a dispiriting causal chain. Knowing, in detail, ...

Southampton University has partnered with three of Egypt’s top institutions in a project aiming to assess and mitigate natural disasters through geographic information system (GIS) mapping technology. The project, ‘Seismic Resilience of Egypt’s Built Environment: A GIS-Based Framework for Assessment and Mitigation’ (Egypt-SeReAM), has received £133.5K from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) ...

Municipal engineers released a new online resource on Thursday meant for commercial building owners to identify if their building in the Anchorage area contains a roof type that has been blamed for numerous snow-induced collapses. The resource comes as the municipality says the snow load on buildings is approaching 90% of the 40 pounds per ...

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have investigated the effects of wildfires on the electricity production of rooftop PV systems and have concluded that residential solar arrays could be used for wildfire detection and monitoring, due to their sensitivity to smoke. In the study “Quantifying the impact of wildfire smoke ...

Zum besseren Schutz der bayerischen Bevölkerung vor Sturzfluten steht im Internet ab sofort eine landesweite Gefahrenlandkarte zur Verfügung. “Die Hinweiskarte ist ein wichtiger Schritt hin zu einem besseren Umgang mit Sturzflutgefahren. Die Karte gibt allen Verantwortlichen vor Ort die Möglichkeit zu einer ersten Beurteilung des jeweiligen Sturzflutrisikos”, sagte Umweltminister Thorsten Glauber (Freie Wähler) der Nachrichtenagentur ...

Fewer Auckland residents would be at risk in the event of a tsunami than the council previously thought. Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) has updated the region’s tsunami map in the wake of new data which it says showed less of the city’s coastline would be at threat. AEM head of operations John Cranfield said the ...

In wildfire season, sometimes you can’t see the tundra for the trees. Most Northwest Territories communities facing any kind of wildfire threat are the ones in the boreal forest. For obvious reasons, the forest gets all the attention. That’s where the fuel and danger is. As a result, nobody has really been counting the tundra ...

İzmir Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi (DEÜ) Mühendislik Fakültesi Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü Öğretim Üyesi ve Deprem Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkez (DAUM) Müdürü Doç. Dr. Ökmen Sümer, İzmir iç ve dış körfezindeki tüm kıyıların ve koyun geometrisini çıkartıp, depremlerin tsunami etkilerini araştırdıklarını belirtip, sonunda oluşturulacak tsunami baskın haritalarıyla, risklerin azaltılmasına imkan sağlanacağını söyledi. Doç. Dr. Sümer, “Bu proje ...

Nearly 75% of the U.S. could experience damaging earthquake shaking, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey-led team of more than 50 scientists and engineers. This was one of several key findings from the latest USGS National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). The model was used to create a color-coded map that pinpoints where damaging earthquakes ...

Even as Alberta prepares for a serious drought this spring, government officials continue to update flood mapping studies covering 1,600 kilometres of riverways. The province is asking for public feedback on 27 flood studies across the province, encompassing 600 kilometres of updated mapping and 1,000 kilometres of new mapping. “That’s more flood mapping we are ...

The GISTDA is continuing to develop its application called FAIPA, “Forest Fire” in English, to notify hotspots at the sub-district, district, and provincial levels, using real-time or near real-time satellite data for primary users, including agencies like the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, volunteer groups, and local residents. The application provides nationwide hotspot data, ...

It’s been one month since deadly tornadoes tore through Tennessee counties and left serious devastation. Since then, many have jumped in to help. One team — part of a data center at Austin Peay State University — used a special computer system to get assistance to victims faster. Mike Wilson, the director of the APSU ...

Four Clemson University researchers are part of a national team that has developed a Flood Evacuation Tool to help forecast floods, identify at-risk roads and verify safe evacuation routes. The tool partners artificial intelligence (AI) with human knowledge. Researchers are using this human-AI teaming (HAT) partnership to create an intelligent model for addressing flood evacuation ...

Los riesgos y peligros a los que estamos expuestos vuelven vulnerables a las poblaciones. Por ello, conocer qué territorios representan mayor peligro a fin de ayudar en la planificación y reducción de daños es el objetivo del Sistema de Información Sobre Peligros y Riesgos (SISPER), una plataforma web desarrollada por científicos de distintas especialidades de ...

Investigadores de la UNAM, bajo la dirección del maestro en Geografía Víctor Manuel Jiménez Escudero, han desarrollado un algoritmo innovador que puede detectar con precisión las emisiones de ceniza provenientes del volcán Popocatépetl, conocido por su constante actividad, uno de los más dinámicos y vigilados del mundo. El Laboratorio Nacional de Observación de la Tierra ...

En el Laboratorio Nacional de Observación de la Tierra de la Facultad de Geografía de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, han recibido más de 300 imágenes satelitales con las cuales han podido realizar al menos 12 productos cartográficos de valor agregado. Con los cuales, busca dar atención con mayor rapidez a las zonas ...

RiskChanges is an open-source cloud-based spatial decision support tool using a dynamic and comprehensive approach to multi-hazard risk assessment. It is designed to support orgaizations in assessing and managing risks associated with multiple hazards at the local level to select optimal risk reduction alternatives. RiskChanges was developed by the University of Twente in collaboration with ...