Development Of Hazard Maps Research Articles

Integrating Historic Mine Hazard Scoring for Comprehensive Assessment of Abandoned Mine Rehabilitation in the Philippines

Abandoned mines remain a social, environmental, and health-risk problem for the Philippines. These abandoned sites are generally characterized by water-filled pit lakes surrounded with disturbed and exposed soils and sediments containing elevated values of heavy metals and other environmental contaminants. Previous studies with abandoned mines in the Philippines have initiated the use of integrated methods for the assessment of existing abandoned mine site conditions as a tool for decision-making. To further provide a numerical basis for rehabilitation prioritization, this paper aimed to utilize the modified Historic Mine Site Scoring System (HMS-SS) for physical and environmental hazard assessment of the abandoned mercury mine located in Barangay Sta. Lourdes, Puerto Princesa City, Philippines and to produce hazard classification maps based on the generated scores. Results identified the pit lake to be extremely hazardous physically, however, the liquid material (rainfall accumulation in the pit) yielded very low environmental hazard scores with only a few identified points that exceed the regulatory limit. Moreover, the two (2) identified mine tailings sites were found to be physically moderately hazardous but are categorized as extremely hazardous for the environmental aspect. The hazard scoring, coupled with the integrated environmental methods for characterization and development of hazard maps, is recommended as a scientific and quantitative basis for providing decisions in priority of actions to be taken with regards to abandoned mine sites.

Assessing the impact of road segment obstruction on accessibility of critical services in case of a hazard

Abstract. Development of hazard maps is one of the measures promoted by the international community to reduce risk. Hazard maps provide information about the probability of given areas to be affected by one or several hazards. As such they are useful tools to evaluate risk and support the development of safe policies. So far studies combining hazard mapping with accessibility to services are few. In hazardous environments, accessibility of the population to strategic infrastructure is important because emergency services and goods will principally be offered at or provided from these locations. If a road segment is blocked by a hazard, accessibility to services may be affected, or worse, people may be completely disconnected from specific services. The importance of each road segment in the transport network as a connecting element enabling access to relevant services is therefore critical information for the authorities. In this study, we propose a new application of hazard mapping which aims to define the importance of each road segment in the accessibility to services, taking into account the probability of being affected by a hazard. By iteratively removing one segment after the other from the road network, changes in accessibility to critical infrastructure are evaluated. Two metrics of road segment importance considering the population affected and the hazard probability are calculated for each segment: a road accessibility risk metric and a users' path vulnerability metric. Visualization of these road metrics is a useful way of valuing hazard maps and may help to support discussions about the development of new infrastructure, road capacity increase and maintenance of existing infrastructures, and evacuation procedures.

Accra Flood Modelling through Application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing Techniques and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Urban Flooding is one of world’s problems in recent times because of its frequent occurrence which results in loss of lives and properties. The first step in flood management is the development of hazard maps. Flood hazard mapping forms the foundation of the decision-making process by providing information which is essential to the understanding of nature and characteristics of flooding to risk community or city. Flood modelling is a complex problem and therefore a lot of factors should be considered before the final map showing flood prone areas are produced. The degree at which each of these factors contributes to flooding must be weighted by using multi decision process before incorporating them in an integrating environment such as GIS to produce the final prediction map. In this study, this approach was employed by using GIS and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The layers that were used in the flooding included; Slope, Drainage basin, Rainfall, Soil, Land Use and Digital Terrain Model (DEM). The result obtained was more accurate as compared to the previous works done on Accra flooding. This is because more than one contributing factors were considered and at the same time, weights were assigned to these contributing factors before overlaying them to produce the final map. The previously occurred flood places were all found in the high possibilities flooding zones. The flood prone map indicates that almost the whole area of Accra and Greater Accra Region has a possibility of flooding. However, the riskiest areas are Accra Metropolitan, Ledzokuku Krowor, Ga West and Ga South.

3D Tsunami Run-up Simulation and Visualization using Particle Method with Gis-Based Geography Model

The 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake was one of the most powerful earthquakes on record in Japan and the huge tsunami caused by the earthquake inflicted extensive damage to the coastal areas of the Tohoku region. To form safe coastal areas, countermeasures against disaster should be developed considering not only tangible infrastructures including breakwater and bridges but also intangible measures including education on disaster prevention and the development of hazard maps. The tsunami run-up analysis is expected to play a role as one of the countermeasures against tsunami. In this research, we aim to establish a tool to effectively analyze the tsunami run-up in urban areas based on the Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. And then, we propose a series of pre-process procedures to develop a detailed geography analysis model that reflects the geography, elevation, and exterior shapes of buildings by referring to 3D location information and digital elevation model data obtained from a geographical information system. Finally, we established a photorealistic visualization method so that citizen can understand the tsunami phenomenon intuitively.

Development of Hazard Map with Probable Maximum Tsunamis

ABSTRACT Cho, Y.-S.; Hwang, H.-S.; Kim, J.-Y., and Kwon, H.-H., 2016. Development of Hazard Map with Probable Maximum Tsunamis. In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 75, pp. 1057 - 1061, Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The disaster prevention against unexpected tsunami events has attracted much attention due to huge casualties resulting from the Sumatra Tsunami on December 26, 2004 in Indonesia and the East Japan Tsunami on March 11, 2011 in Japan. Research on how to mitigate the damage by unexpected tsunami events should be completed, because of the significant number of human deaths and property damage from these events. An effective and economic way for the tsunami hazard mitigation planning is to develop a hazard map along those coastlines vulnerable to tsunami events. In order to create a hazard map for unexpected tsunami events, n...

Comment on "Seismic Hazard Assessment (2003-2009) for the Italian Building Code" by Massimiliano Stucchi, Carlo Meletti, Valentina Montaldo, Helen Crowley, Gian Michele Calvi, and Enzo Boschi

A new reference probabilistic seismic hazard map of Italy was recently presented by Stucchi et al. (2011). The map represents the most recent development of the “Cornell‐McGuire” approach adopted in Italy in the last 20 years for hazard assessment and implements current models for epistemic uncertainty treatment. This comment does not address the possible limitations of the considered approach itself, but some important (and possibly misleading) consequences of the representation chosen for hazard outcomes, selection of alternative procedures to be included in the logic‐tree considered to manage the epistemic uncertainty, and some statements about the possibility of using recent seismicity to validate these outcomes. This last point is of major importance since any future development of hazard mapping in Italy strongly depends on a careful evaluation of possible drawbacks inherent in the present formulations that should be pointed out by comparing theoretical outcomes and observations. The first aspect is related to one main result provided in the new hazard map that made it possible to base the design spectra for a building on point hazard data instead of on four intervals of peak ground acceleration (PGA), as was the case for the previous code. The authors claim the advantage of the new map is that it provides unprecedented detail of reference ground motion values associated with a fixed return time. In particular, officially released values (INGV, 2008) provide a PGA with four significant digits at more than 16,000 points. This appears overwhelming when compared to the mere four values associated with the zones of the previous map, with PGA set at 0, 0.15, 0.25, and 0.35 g . However, a closer look at the starting data may cast some doubts …

Development of Hazard Map in Waterfront Area by Ship Drifting and Grounding Model in Tsunami

Not only hydrodynamic forces of tsunami current cause serious damage, but also driftage by tsunami may cause additional damage in a port and harbor area. Especially, in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, many stranded ships were observed. Therefore, when considering disaster prevention, the identification of expansion mechanisms of tsunami damage caused by drifted ships is very important. This study aims to develop a practical model to analyze the ship drifting and grounding motion by tsunami current. The simulated ship locus was consistent with the evidenced ship locus. And, as a hazard map, the potential damage due to ship drifting was evaluated by incorporating the possibility of collision with drifted ship.