Special issue on meteorological disaster risk analysis and assessment: on basis of grey systems theory

Abstract

Disaster risk analysis and assessment are the main content and foundation of the management of all risks associated with disasters. They constitute the knowledge basis for meteorological disaster prediction, prevention, compensation, and all other works related to disastrous weather conditions. Meteorological disaster risk analysis studies what kinds of weather disasters will occur at a certain particular geographic region within a specific timeframe. At the same time, meteorological information system contains numerous kinds of uncertainties and incompleteness. That is, meteorological information system is made up of largely grey information. In recent years, a large number of researchers tried to utilize different theories of uncertainty to analyse meteorological disasters. Grey systems theory (Liu et al. 2010; Liu and Lin, 2006) is one among such theories on uncertainty. It includes such major components as grey correlation analysis, grey clusters, grey prediction, etc., and represents a novel theory that is developed to deal with situations of uncertainty due to poor quality of information. This special issue combines the analysis of meteorological disasters and risks with grey systems theory to formulate a new approach for the analysis and assessment of meteorological disasters and risks. This new approach not only supplements the traditional methods widely used in the area of research on disaster risks, but also develops new instruments that are effective in dealing with meteorological disasters and risks.