Extreme Weather Hazards Research Articles

Untangling the relationship between power outage and population activity recovery in disasters

Despite recognition of the relationship between infrastructure resilience and community recovery, very limited empirical evidence exists regarding the extent to which the disruptions in and restoration of infrastructure services contribute to the speed of community recovery. To address this gap, this study investigates the relationship between community and infrastructure systems in the context of hurricane impacts, focusing on the recovery dynamics of population activity and power infrastructure restoration. Empirical observational data were utilized to analyze the extent of impact, recovery duration, and recovery types of both systems in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. The study reveals three key findings. First, power outage duration positively correlates with outage extent until a certain impact threshold is reached. Beyond this threshold, restoration time remains relatively stable regardless of outage magnitude. This finding underscores the need to strengthen power infrastructure, particularly in extreme weather conditions, to minimize outage restoration time. Second, power was fully restored in 70% of affected areas before population activity levels normalized. This finding suggests the role infrastructure functionality plays in post-disaster community recovery. Quicker power restoration did not equate to rapid population activity recovery due to other possible factors such as transportation, housing damage, and business interruptions. Finally, if power outages last beyond two weeks, community activity resumes before complete power restoration, indicating adaptability in prolonged outage scenarios. This implies the capacity of communities to adapt to ongoing power outages and continue daily life activities. These findings offer valuable empirical insights into the interaction between human activities and infrastructure systems, such as power outages, during extreme weather events. They also enhance our empirical understanding of how infrastructure resilience influences community recovery. By identifying the critical thresholds for power outage functionality and duration that affect population activity recovery, this study furthers our understanding of how infrastructure performance intertwines with community functioning in extreme weather conditions. Hence, the findings can inform infrastructure operators, emergency managers, and public officials about the significance of resilient infrastructure in life activity recovery of communities when facing extreme weather hazards.

Weather effects on the lifecycle of U.S. Department of Defense equipment replacement (WELDER)

Extreme weather has a direct and significant impact on buildings and infrastructure, resulting in billions of dollars of damage each year. This problem continues to grow as climate patterns change and buildings are exposed to new and different hazards than what they were designed to withstand. In order to better plan for the long-range sustainment, restoration, modernization, and eventual recapitalization of these buildings, organizations with large building portfolios, such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), must have an awareness of the risks that these extreme weather events present. This research aimed to develop an approach to estimate condition loss and reduction in service life for the components of a building due to extreme weather hazards, to understand the risks that may be present in certain buildings and building systems. To achieve this objective, a damage association matrix was developed that categorizes climate hazards, the damage modes that they produce, and the individual component types impacted. This damage matrix formally links state-of-the-art climate model output, which provides projections of the probability of various climate hazards with a damage effects model that quantifies the consequence on component-level condition and service life. This method is applied to an actual portfolio of buildings in a particular geographic location and with a pre-defined component inventory that comprises the building. This approach can be aggregated to the system-, facility-, and site-level thus helping support billions of dollars in recapitalization decisions related to restoration/modernization of facilities.

Extreme Weather Hazards and Insurance Revenues Based on Bi-directional LSTM

As extreme weather becomes more prevalent, it has serious implications for the insurance industry, real estate owners, and historic buildings. First of all, for the extreme weather, we summarize extreme weather into three parts: extreme temperature, extreme precipitation, and extreme humidity, and we process the data by combining the actual situation and applying the improved Critic method, and we demonstrate the data processing by taking the three data of Lhasa and Luxor as examples. anomalies. Subsequently, a future extreme climate prediction model for a region based on the Bi-directional LSTM method is developed. A time-weather model was fitted based on the collected data, with the highest and lowest points as the anomalies. At the same time, we simplify the formula to derive the insurance company's revenue, thus modeling the relationship between the degree of extreme weather hazard and insurance revenue, and derive that the insurance company will not be able to underwrite when the combined hazard is greater than the ratio of the insurance claim cost to the insurance payment. We applied the resulting model to Lhasa and Luxor, and plotted the combined hazard level of the actual data and the predicted data to help the insurance company visualize the combined hazard level of the region each month, and then choose whether to underwrite the policy in that region or not.

Multihazard Study at Tourism Locations in The Citatah Karst Area

Multihazards at important tourism locations are identified for sustainable tourism. The Karst area has tourism assets that have the potential for multi-hazard disasters. This study aims to identify multihazards at tourism sites in the Citatah Karst Area, West Bandung Regency. Tourism locations are identified using a survey method. Multihazards are analyzed using a Geographic Information System (GIS) with map product output. Based on the analysis, there are four types of disasters at 13 tourist sites in the Citatah Karst Area. The relative landslide hazard lies in the southwest Karst Citatah area, which has 13 potentially dangerous tourism sites. The earthquake hazard lies in the southeast and northwest areas with 13 potentially dangerous tourism locations. The danger of flooding lies in the Citarum river basin southwest of the Citatah Karst, with three potentially dangerous tourist sites. The potential for extreme weather hazards does not dominate the Citatah Karst Area, so it is relatively safe. However, several locations are included in the high category, namely in the southeast and northwest of the Citatah Karst Area. Each Multihazard at a tourism location is divided into four classifications: not affected, low, medium, and high. This research can be helpful in the development of disaster-based sustainable tourism potential.

Exploring interactions between socioeconomic context and natural hazards on human population displacement

Climate change is leading to more extreme weather hazards, forcing human populations to be displaced. We employ explainable machine learning techniques to model and understand internal displacement flows and patterns from observational data alone. For this purpose, a large, harmonized, global database of disaster-induced movements in the presence of floods, storms, and landslides during 2016–2021 is presented. We account for environmental, societal, and economic factors to predict the number of displaced persons per event in the affected regions. Here we show that displacements can be primarily attributed to the combination of poor household conditions and intense precipitation, as revealed through the interpretation of the trained models using both Shapley values and causality-based methods. We hence provide empirical evidence that differential or uneven vulnerability exists and provide a means for its quantification, which could help advance evidence-based mitigation and adaptation planning efforts.

Impact of climate change on the extreme weather hazards and natural disasters in Bulgaria

The question of whether the climate of Bulgaria is changing and in what direction is not yet fully understood and this gives rise to various hypotheses and analyzes, which are often a reason for heated discussions between scientists with different expertise. However, there is agreement between the scientists that the increase in the frequency and intensity of meteorological and climate extremes and the natural disasters provoked by them are related to climate change. The possible effects of climate and meteorological extreems on the risk of adverse events and natural disasters in Bulgaria have been studied by different authors for different periods of observation. There are also many open access data that we have used for analysis purposes in this paper. The article aims to interpret the results of various studies on the changes in the behavior of major climatic and meteorological elements and extremes in Bulgaria in recent decades in the context of existing scenarios and indicators of climate change in the latter. The results show that there are already changes in the indicators for the territory of our country and that Bulgaria will be significantly affected by the global warming to the end of this century. This impact will in most cases be unfavorable both for the country’s economy and for the people’s health and the state of ecosystems, and will contribute to increasing the risk of natural disasters.

Frightened or familiarised? Permanent residents' and second‐home owners' risk perceptions of extreme weather events

AbstractThe number and severity of extreme weather events have been increasing globally. Given the vulnerabilities of second homes to natural disasters, it is important to learn how their owners consider the related risks. This paper investigates the extreme weather‐event risk perceptions and their preconditions between second‐home owners and local people in the Little Beskid mountains in Poland. The results show that, despite significant differences in social, demographic and presence–absence terms, the two populations were very similar with respect to risk perception. It then lays the ground for community preparedness and successful recovery from extreme weather hazards.

Policies To Reduce The Risk Of Extreme Weather In Central Java Province

Most districts/cities in Central Java Province fall into the category of high-level disaster areas especially extreme weather hazards. Increasing regional/city resilience and reducing disaster risk have become policies both at the central government level and at the regional (district/city) level. Disaster risk according to ex-ante and restrictive interpretations, is the result of the interaction between the hazards of a natural event and the elements exposed to hazards and their vulnerabilities. Potential areas of extreme weather hazards (hazard level = H) in the Central Java Province, which covers 35 cities/districts; some areas have high hazard level. The potential population exposed to extreme weather (vulnerability level = V); most areas have high level. The potential for extreme weather losses (exposure level = E) all regions have high level. Given that vulnerability (V) in the Central Java Province is dominated by many poor people, the strategy that needs to be done to reduce vulnerability is through poverty alleviation programs. To reduce the level of exposure (E) in the form of large physical and economic losses, it is necessary to provide the urban infrastructure that ensures the sustainability of the social-economic activity system can take place properly. In addition, to overcome environmental damage, it is necessary to carry out an environmental conservation program in the Central Java Province comprehensively and sustainably.

Indices of extremes: geographic patterns of change in extremes and associated vegetation impacts under climate intervention

Abstract. Extreme weather events have been demonstrated to be increasing in frequency and intensity across the globe and are anticipated to increase further with projected changes in climate. Solar climate intervention strategies, specifically stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), have the potential to minimize some of the impacts of a changing climate while more robust reductions in greenhouse gas emissions take effect. However, to date little attention has been paid to the possible responses of extreme weather and climate events under climate intervention scenarios. We present an analysis of 16 extreme surface temperature and precipitation indices, as well as associated vegetation responses, applied to the Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS). GLENS is an ensemble of simulations performed with the Community Earth System Model (CESM1) wherein SAI is simulated to offset the warming produced by a high-emission scenario throughout the 21st century, maintaining surface temperatures at 2020 levels. GLENS is generally successful at maintaining global mean temperature near 2020 levels; however, it does not completely offset some of the projected warming in northern latitudes. Some regions are also projected to cool substantially in comparison to the present day, with the greatest decreases in daytime temperatures. The differential warming–cooling also translates to fewer very hot days but more very hot nights during the summer and fewer very cold days or nights compared to the current day. Extreme precipitation patterns, for the most part, are projected to reduce in intensity in areas that are wet in the current climate and increase in intensity in dry areas. We also find that the distribution of daily precipitation becomes more consistent with more days with light rain and fewer very intense events than currently occur. In many regions there is a reduction in the persistence of long dry and wet spells compared to present day. However, asymmetry in the night and day temperatures, together with changes in cloud cover and vegetative responses, could exacerbate drying in regions that are already sensitive to drought. Overall, our results suggest that while SAI may ameliorate some of the extreme weather hazards produced by global warming, it would also present some significant differences in the distribution of climate extremes compared to the present day.

Doppler weather radar data assimilation at convective-allowing grid spacing for predicting an extreme weather event in Southern India

ABSTRACT Thunderstorms and heavy rainfall are the most devastating and dangerous weather phenomena over the tropical region. Southern Peninsula India in general and regions close to Western Ghats in particular are very prone to such severe weather activity. To improve the short-range forecasting of such extreme weather hazards, tremendous efforts are made to develop Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) network over Indian region for detection and continuous monitoring of weather activities. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and its three-dimensional variational (3D-Var) data assimilation system are used to evaluate the importance of the frequently available DWR observations at convective-allowing grid spacing for predicting an extreme weather event. Various assimilation experiments are performed using background error covariance statistics generated from the National Meteorological Center (NMC) method and Ensemble method, quality control in radial winds, and with/without Digital Filter Initialization (DFI) schemes for DWR data assimilation. Results suggest that with the assimilation of DWR observations, the WRF model is able to predict selected rainfall events with less temporal, spatial and intensity error. Moreover, synoptic conditions are more favourable after DWR assimilation. Due to lack of precise initial conditions, control experiments are not able to capture this extreme weather activity. Results suggest that better skill is seen when the DFI method is used in combination with ensemble background error covariance as compared to other experiments. The maximum rainfall prediction skill is enhanced with DWR data assimilation experiment with DFI method and ensemble background error covariance statistics.

Recent changes in vulnerability and responses of economic and human systems to major extreme weather hazards in the United States

Reducing the impacts and risk of weather hazards requires better knowledge of the regions that are most affected in terms of economic damage, fatality and injury. While understanding of weather hazards has greatly improved, regional vulnerability to weather hazards of various types has not been well assessed in the United States. Through a compilation of event-based records of eight types of weather hazards for 1996–2016 at the national, regional and state levels, our analysis shows large differences in the change trends in economic damage, fatality and injury caused by drought, coastal flood, hail and wildfire, demonstrating the inconsistent responses of economic and human systems to weather hazards of various types at the state level. Despite a general increase in annual occurrences, spatial analysis shows that vulnerability to tornado and hail has decreased significantly in most of the country. Our results have great implications for adaptation and mitigation strategies, through identifying the vulnerable regions and types of hazards that require more urgent efforts for reducing economic and human losses. It is, however, important to keep in mind that the results may depend on the records, indicators and time periods used for the analysis.

The Influence of Political Ideology and Socioeconomic Vulnerability on Perceived Health Risks of Heat Waves in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract Vulnerability and resilience to extreme weather hazards are a function of diverse physical, social, and psychological factors. Previous research has focused on individual factors that influence public perceptions of hazards, such as politics, ideology, and cultural worldviews, as well as on socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect geographically based vulnerability, environmental justice, and community resilience. Few studies have investigated individual socioeconomic and racial/ethnic differences in public risk perceptions of the health hazards associated with extreme heat events, which are now increasing due to climate change. This study uses multilevel statistical modeling to investigate individual- and geographic-level (e.g., census tract level and regional) social, economic, and biophysical influences on public perceptions of the adverse health impacts associated with heat waves. Political orientation and climate change beliefs are the strongest predictors of heat wave health risk perceptions; household income also has a relatively strong and consistent effect. Contextual socioeconomic vulnerability, measured with a social vulnerability index at the census tract level, also significantly affects heat wave risk perceptions. The strong influence of political orientation and climate beliefs on perceptions of adverse health impacts from heat waves suggests that ideological predispositions can increase vulnerability to climate change.

Modernizing Distribution System Restoration to Achieve Grid Resiliency Against Extreme Weather Events: An Integrated Solution

Recent severe power outages caused by extreme weather hazards have highlighted the importance and urgency of improving the resilience of the electric power grid. As the distribution grids still remain vulnerable to natural disasters, the power industry has focused on methods of restoring distribution systems after disasters in an effective and quick manner. The current distribution system restoration practice for utilities is mainly based on predetermined priorities and tends to be inefficient and suboptimal, and the lack of situational awareness after the hazard significantly delays the restoration process. As a result, customers may experience an extended blackout, which causes large economic loss. On the other hand, the emerging advanced devices and technologies enabled through grid modernization efforts have the potential to improve the distribution system restoration strategy. However, utilizing these resources to aid the utilities in better distribution system restoration decision making in response to extreme weather events is a challenging task. Therefore, this paper proposes an integrated solution: a distribution system restoration decision support tool designed by leveraging resources developed for grid modernization. First, we review the current distribution restoration practice and discuss why it is inadequate in response to extreme weather events. Then, we describe how the grid modernization efforts could benefit distribution system restoration, and we propose an integrated solution in the form of a decision support tool to achieve the goal. The advantages of the solution include improving situational awareness of the system damage status and facilitating survivability for customers. The paper provides a comprehensive review of how the existing methodologies in the literature could be leveraged to achieve the key advantages. The benefits of the developed system restoration decision support tool include the optimal and efficient allocation of repair crews and resources, the expediting of the restoration process, and the reduction of outage durations for customers, in response to severe blackouts due to extreme weather hazards.

A resilient microgrid formation strategy for load restoration considering master-slave distributed generators and topology reconfiguration

Recent severe power outages caused by extreme weather hazards have highlighted the importance and urgency of improving the resilience of electric distribution grids. Microgrids with various types of distributed generators (DGs) have the potential to enhance the electricity supply continuity and thus facilitate resilient distribution grids under natural disasters. In this paper, a novel load restoration optimization model is proposed to coordinate topology reconfiguration and microgrid formation while satisfying a variety of operational constraints. The proposed method exploits benefits of operational flexibility provided by grid modernization to enable more critical load pickup. Specifically, a mixed-integer second order cone programming is employed to reduce the computational complexity of the proposed optimization with optimality guaranteed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified on an IEEE 33-bus test case and a modified 615-bus test system.

‘The weather is like the game we play’: Coping and adaptation strategies for extreme weather events among ethnic minority groups in upland northern Vietnam

AbstractThe Vietnamese government, along with country‐based non‐government organisations, are well aware of the vulnerability of Vietnam's coastal and low‐lying areas to extreme weather events. Yet scant attention has been paid to extreme weather hazards affecting Vietnam's northern mountainous regions and the livelihoods of ethnic minority farmers residing there. Building on conceptual tools from vulnerability, food security and sustainable livelihoods literatures, we examine the impacts of extreme weather, namely drought and severe cold spells, in Vietnam's northern uplands. We explore the degree to which these events impact the livelihood portfolios and food security of ethnic minority farmers, and examine the coping strategies households initiate, based on their ecological knowledge as well as recent market integration initiatives. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with ethnic minority Hmong and Yao semi‐subsistence households undertaken yearly from 2012 to 2014, we demonstrate that financial capital – now more central to households' livelihoods than ever before due to state‐sponsored agricultural intensification – is an important means for farmers to cope with extreme weather events. Yet concurrently, longstanding culturally rooted social capital, networks and ties remain critical. Nonetheless, short‐ and long‐term adaptation is not widespread, leading us to investigate possible explanations.

Multi-phase assessment and adaptation of power systems resilience to natural hazards

Extreme weather hazards, as high-impact low-probability events, have catastrophic consequences on critical infrastructures. As a direct impact of climate change, the frequency and severity of some of these events is expected to increase in the future, which highlights the necessity of evaluating their impact and investigating how can systems withstand a major disruption with limited degradation and recover rapidly. This paper first presents a multi-phase resilience assessment framework that can be used to analyze any natural threat that may have a severe single, multiple and/or continuous impact on critical infrastructures, such as electric power systems. Namely, these phases are (i) threat characterization, (ii) vulnerability assessment of the system's components, (iii) system's reaction and (iv) system's restoration. Second, multi-phase adaptation cases, i.e. making the system more robust, redundant and responsive are explained to discuss different strategies to enhance the resilience of the electricity network. To illustrate the above, this time-dependent framework is applied to assess the impact of potential future windstorms and floods on a reduced version of the Great Britain's power network. Finally, the adaptation cases are evaluated to conclude in what situations a stronger, bigger or smarter grid is preferred against the uncertain future.

Special Issue on Enhancing Resilience to Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Semi-Arid Africa

In 2011, a collaborative project focused on climate and ecosystem change adaptation and resilience studies in Africa (CECAR-Africa) with Ghana as the focal country, was initiated. The goal was to combine climate change and ecosystem change research, and to use that combination as a basis for building an integrated resilience enhancement strategy as a potential model for semi-arid regions across Sub-Saharan Africa. The Project is being financially supported by the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS), a collaborative programme of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). CECAR-Africa involves the following leading climate and ecosystems research organizations in Ghana and Japan: The University of Tokyo; Kyoto University; United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS); University of Ghana; Ghana Meteorological Agency; University for Development Studies; and United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNUINRA). CECAR-Africa has been operating fully since 2012, with a focus on three thematic areas, namely: Forecast and assessment of climate change impact on agro-ecosystems (Agro-ecosystem resilience); Risk assessment of extreme weather hazards and development of adaptive resource management methods (Engineering resilience); and Implementing capacity development programs for local communities and professionals (social institutions-technical capacity development) using the assessment results derived from work on the first two themes. This special issue presents major outcomes of the Project so far. The articles featured used various techniques and methods such as field surveys, questionnaires, focal group discussions, land use and cover change analysis, and climate downscaled modelling to investigate the impacts of climate and ecosystem changes on river flows and agriculture, and to assess the local capacity for coping with floods, droughts and disasters, and for enhancing the resilience of farming communities. We are happy to be able to publish this special issue just in time for an international conference on CECAR-Africa in Tamale, Ghana, on 6-7 August, 2014. It is hoped that the shared research outcomes will facilitate discussions on the project research themes and interactions and exchange of ideas among academics, professionals, and government officials on the way forward for the CECARAfrica Project. We find it only appropriate to conclude by thanking the authors and reviewers of the articles, and by acknowledging, with gratitude, the local knowledge and other bits and pieces of information contributed by the many anonymous farmers and other people of northern Ghana.