Disaster In History Research Articles

RISK ASSESSMENT OF GEOLOGICAL DISASTERS ALONG THE G213 MAOXIAN-WENCHUAN SECTION BASED ON GF-6 DATA

Abstract. China is a country prone to natural disasters, and roads are easily damaged in natural disasters. As the infrastructure of people's production and life and the lifeline of post-disaster rescue, roads play a very important role. There are many previous studies on geological disasters risk assessment, but few special researches on highway geological disasters risk assessment, especially quantitative risk assessment combined with remote sensing images. Therefore, the risk assessment of geological disasters along the road is of great significance for the prevention and control of geological disasters and the protection of life and property safety. Based on GF-6 data and other geographic data, this study used the comprehensive evaluation method to realize the geological disasters risk assessment of the Maoxian-Wenchuan section along the G213 line, and analysed and discussed the causes and spatial distribution of geological disasters along the G213 line. Our study presents several key findings, (1) The order of impact degree of each impact factor is road network density, soil erosion, slope, human activities, vegetation coverage, rainfall, and slope aspect, among them, the road network density factor plays a leading role, and the aspect factor is the least impact factor; (2) The geological disasters risk in the study area is divided into five categories: extremely low risk, low risk, medium risk, high risk, and extremely high risk. In general, the geological disasters risk of the research road section is relatively high, and the risk area division is consistent with the historical disaster point data. The research results can provide reference for the smooth development and implementation of road geological disasters risk assessment in the mountainous areas in southwestern China.

중국 고대] 새로운 자료, 새로운 방법론, 중국고대사 연구의 진전 -2020~2021년 연구 동향과 과제-

Despite the severe COVID-19 pandemic situation since 2020, the Chinese ancient history academia in Korea has made meaningful achievements while adapting to the non-face-to-face research environment. Active exchanges with overseas academics took place research papers grew in quantity, and academically important books continued to be published.BR Amid these achievements, the trend of research related to ancient china over the past two years shows the transition to new approaches (in Chinese ancient history), which break down existing barriers between academic disciplines and which are sharing new data and various methodologies.BR Therefore, this paper intends to collect and summarize the achievements of history, archeology, philosophy, literature, and literary studies over the past two years, as much as possible, focusing on ancient Chinese history. In addition, studies on the history of disasters and environments of ancient China have been conducted considerably in the context of the corona pandemic.BR In this paper, the research achievements of the past two years are classified into ‘History of pre-Qin’, ‘History of Qin-Han empire’, and ‘Others’, and then divided into several detailed sub-topics.BR In recent new trends of researches, it is expected that the Chinese ancient history academia will achieve gradual improvements in research while exploring new methodologies with new data. And in this process, the most necessary virtue is an open attitude toward other disciplines.

Risk assessment for comprehensive meteorological disaster of winter wheat based on multisource gridded data: A case study in the upper Huaihe River basin, China

AbstractCrop production security is an essential guarantee for the prosperity of country and the well‐being of people. In the context of frequent occurrence of extreme weather events, how to comprehensively evaluate the risk of multiple hazards and quantitatively describe spatial differences will be one of the significant topics in agricultural disaster mitigation. In this study, based on the gridded meteorological data and other datasets (crop, socioeconomic, disaster loss, and actual planting location) from 2000 to 2020, multihazard risk model for different growth period was built to assess the comprehensive risk of winter wheat in the upper Huaihe River basin (UHRB), China. The conclusions were as follows: (a) The spatial distribution of continuous rain risk increased gradually from north to south; the area of the highest lodging risk was located in the east; the spatial trend of drought risk was the highest in the south and the lowest in the northeast. (b) The weights of continuous rain, lodging, and drought disasters were 41, 31, and 28%, respectively, which indicated that winter wheat in UHRB was most affected by continuous rain during the harvest period. (c) The spatial distribution of comprehensive disaster risk assessment showed that the higher risk areas were located in the central and southern parts (Huaibin, Linquan, Luoshan). After verification by historical disasters information, the results are credible, providing a concrete scientific basis for implementing regional agricultural disaster response measures.

Reconditioning the resilience of Palu City within the natural disaster stories

In September 2018, the city of Palu was devastated by three natural disasters: an earthquake, a tsunami, and liquefaction. The disaster impacted most of the city, including the destruction of the city’s coastal areas by the tsunami, and some places experienced ’moving land’ or liquefaction. Both disasters were triggered by an earthquake with a magnitude of ±7M, which caused numerous buildings to collapse and thousands of casualties. Nevertheless, this series of tragedies force the city to adapt and rebuild a new life. Using the qualitative approach, this research seeks to understand how Palu’s city life changes in terms of resilience, supported by the exploration of the city’s historical, natural, and urban morphology. This research was also done based on author’s own first-hand experience of natural disasters in Palu. The finding revealed that the city of Palu has a long history of natural disasters, yet the people still desire to continue living in Palu. The government created new urban spaces and embraced adaptive design by enacting the ratification of new regulations regarding urban development planning that place greater attention on disaster issues. Finally, natural disasters let people and cities learn more about how to safely cope with living in natural disaster-prone cities.

Evaluation of community resilience to debris-flow disasters: A case study of Nantou, Taiwan

Taiwan is located in the subtropical monsoon region. Typhoons, earthquakes, and rainfall have historically been the most serious natural disasters affecting the region, especially its geologically sensitive mountain settlements. The heavy rain associated with typhoons can readily cause large-scale compound disasters such as landslides, rockfalls, and debris flows, and thus can cause sudden blockages to waterways. The existing body of research on earth and rock disaster prevention mostly considers the potential of occurrence and the degree of harm, but pays relatively scant attention to community resilience. To fully understand the potential risks of hillside communities exposed to debris-flow disasters, and the occurrence of unavoidable disasters, it is essential to gauge each community's pre-disaster preparedness, as well as its disaster response and post-disaster recovery capabilities. Accordingly, through a rigorous literature review, the Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and the analytical hierarchy process method (AHP), this study develops a resilience assessment framework. The development process indicated that the most important factor in community resilience is the community's environment, followed by adjustment and learning: i.e., the residents' cognition and response mechanisms to debris-flow disasters. Other key assessment indicators include the degree of potential hazard, the ratio of landslide area to exposed area, the local history of such disasters, risk perceptions, and population density. The framework is therefore valuable for enhancing community resilience and disaster preparedness, and reducing the impact of disasters.

Prorocká úloha církve: Boží jednání v dějinách jako komunikativní dění

This study, which was presented at a symposium on Josef Smolík, first analyses how this author understood the prophetic role of the Church. According to Smolík, the prophetic charism makes it possible to discern God’s will for the congregation, the church, and the individual. Smolík, however, refuses to understand the prophetic role of the church as the ability to deduct God’s action from history, or even to look into the details of God’s intentions for the world. Rather, the role of prophecy is to encourage the believer to find his place in a complex world and to develop the right attitude toward it. It seems that the issue of prophecy is not very prominent in the current theological discussion. This is due, among other things, to the great upheavals that the doctrine of providence has undergone in the last century under the pressure of historical catastrophes. Theology has not only learned to be reluctant to attempts at a theology of history, but has also challenged the traditional doctrine of God’s action in the world. Several models of God’s action can be distinguished in today’s debate, of which the communicative model, resting on God’s appeal and human response to it, has gained much resonance. This also brings the topic of prophecy back into play, albeit in a different context. The communicative model succeeds in defending God’s action against the objections of natural science and in giving adequate space to human free action, but at the cost of abandoning the traditional notion of God’s rule over history.

Evaluation of Drought Vulnerability of Maize and Influencing Factors in Songliao Plain Based on the SE-DEA-Tobit Model

Rain-fed agriculture is easily affected by meteorological disasters, especially drought. As an important factor of risk formation, actively carrying out agricultural drought vulnerability assessments is conducive to improving food security and reducing economic losses. In this study, an SE-DEA model with regional exposure and drought risk as input factors and the maize yield reduction rate and drought-affected area as output factors is established. The aim is to evaluate and zone the drought vulnerability of the maize belt in the Songliao Plain. The results show the following: (1) From 2000 to 2019, the drought vulnerability of maize showed a fluctuating increasing trend. The vulnerability in Harbin and central Jilin Province is high, which is extremely unfavorable for maize production. (2) Comparing the historical disaster data with the drought vulnerability map generated using the SE-DEA model, it could be found that the results obtained using the SE-DEA model are reliable. (3) The Tobit model shows that the proportion of the effective irrigated area is more important to alleviate vulnerability. For drought vulnerability zoning using a cluster analysis, we suggest that regulated deficit irrigation should be actively developed in high-vulnerability areas to ensure maize yield while improving water efficiency. The results of this study can provide a basis for the development of drought mitigation and loss reduction strategies, and they provide new ideas for future research.

Disaster Journalism in Print Media: Analysis of the Top 10 Hydrogeomorphological Disaster Events in Portugal, 1865–2015

Disaster communication guidelines emphasize that journalists should be aware of past major disasters and draw lessons from the coverage of those events. The press is an important source for the evolution of historical disaster and risk research paradigms over time. This study explored the top 10 damaging hydrogeomorphological events in Portugal selected from the disaster database, which includes events that caused human damages (fatalities, injured, missing, evacuated, and displaced) reported over a period of 151 years (1865–2015) by the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias (DN). News analysis was guided by the news protocol. The analysis of the news published in DN enabled us to identify textual marks that present interconnections in the journalistic coverage and produce discursive standards for these disasters. The textual marks were associated with the hazard and risk paradigms. The discursive standards of DN did not clearly reflect the ruptures in the hazard paradigms. As a rule, the journalistic reports contributed to the naturalization of disasters and the gap in public understanding of risks, by presenting an approach focused on relief actions—ignoring social issues, vulnerability, and population resilience—reducing the discourse of preparedness for future disasters.

Japan’s Disaster Memorial Museums and framing 3.11: Othering the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in cultural memory

ABSTRACT With the proliferation of several dozen new exhibits and museums dedicated to this specific disaster, the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, can be considered a turning point in the preservation of disaster memory in Japan. Although there is limited research on disaster museums, they play a significant role in shaping cultural memory of 3.11, as they are regarded as reliable, objective institutions of memory. Through analysis of 17 government-established 3.11 museums, this research explores the following questions: How do public disaster museums frame their representations of 3.11, and what official narrative is created within the cultural memory of the triple disaster in Japan? Drawing from analysis of the museums’ mission statements and exhibitions, and interviews with curators and museum staff, we argue that most disaster museums support narratives of overcoming hardships to contribute to a better future, showing continuity with narratives typical of other memorial museums such as WWII, or pre-3.11 disaster museums. In contrast to the commemoration of war and its influence on cultural memory, disaster museums have received relatively little scholarly attention. Yet, these forward-looking messages, combined with tendencies of museums to focus on local disaster experiences and emphasize disaster risk reduction with an artificial separation between man-made disasters vs. natural hazards, contributes to an othering of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in cultural memory, as an outlier in Japan’s long history of disasters. Without full representation of the compound disaster, understanding of 3.11 and the effective transmission of the intended lessons is severely limited.

KONTEKSTUALISASI PEMBELAJARAN SEJARAH MELALUI PERISTIWA BENCANA

The challenges of learning history are increasingly diverse. One of the issues that often get repeated is regarding how irrelevant and out-of-context the history subjects are for students. According to the reason, designing a contextual history learning plays an important role. Learning history throughout the disaster events is an attempt to serve history, not only as part of human's past life but also as a widened field that is quite relevant to students' life. The fact that Indonesia is a disaster-prone country with a total of 763 natural disasters in the first quarter of 2021 is another reason that shows the urgency of learning disaster history. Bringing disaster events into history learning has a particular purpose of improving people's awareness of disaster hazards. This study used the literature studying method by analyzing every related reference. The purpose of this study is to find possibilities to design history learning through disaster events by analyzing the curriculum draft, collecting any sources about disaster histories, and concluding how it benefits students. Using environmental and disaster history as learning material is expected to be an inspiration for educators to develop and create a learning process that accommodates factual issues around students so that the subject does not lose its relevance.

Advanced Techniques of Flood Forecasting, Flood Inundation Mapping and Flood Prioritization of Panam River Basin

Floods have been quite possibly the most troubling natural disasters in history, causing significant casualties, loss of life, and collateral destruction. Also, we see a shift in the frequency of rainfall every year due to climate change, which exacerbates flooding. Flood forecasting is essential to provide early warning to the people of flood-prone areas, provide enough time for preparedness, and reduce the damage to lives and properties. The flood inundation simulation is critical in presenting potential impending flooding in the study region. Furthermore, flood prioritization plays a key role in better watershed management. Looking at the present scenario, the machine learning methods like neural networks and fuzzy logic contribute profoundly to the headway of flood forecast frameworks giving better execution and financially savvy arrangements. The flood forecasting models can be developed using ANN, ANFIS and fuzzy logic. The comparative study between the developed models can also be carried out by determining different evaluation parameters. For flood forecasting using ANFIS, it is found that the coefficient of correlation values ranges from 0.85 to 0.95. In order to regulate the extent of the flooded area and the depth of the flooded water, HEC-RAS efficiently develops a flood inundation map. Flood inundation maps can be used to know the regions which are more or less vulnerable to flooding hazards.

A Novel Digital Twin Architecture with Similarity-Based Hybrid Modeling for Supporting Dependable Disaster Management Systems.

Disaster management systems require accurate disaster monitoring and prediction services to reduce damages caused by natural disasters. Digital twins of natural environments can provide the services for the systems with physics-based and data-driven disaster models. However, the digital twins might generate erroneous disaster prediction due to the impracticability of defining high-fidelity physics-based models for complex natural disaster behavior and the dependency of data-driven models on the training dataset. This causes disaster management systems to inappropriately use disaster response resources, including medical personnel, rescue equipment and relief supplies, to ensure that it may increase the damages from the natural disasters. This study proposes a digital twin architecture to provide accurate disaster prediction services with a similarity-based hybrid modeling scheme. The hybrid modeling scheme creates a hybrid disaster model that compensates for the errors of physics-based prediction results with a data-driven error correction model to enhance the prediction accuracy. The similarity-based hybrid modeling scheme reduces errors from the data dependency of the hybrid model by constructing a training dataset using similarity assessments between the target disaster and the historical disasters. Evaluations in wildfire scenarios show that the digital twin decreases prediction errors by approximately 50% compared with those of the existing schemes.

Multi-Hazard Meteorological Disaster Risk Assessment for Agriculture Based on Historical Disaster Data in Jilin Province, China

The impact of global climate change is gradually intensifying, and the frequent occurrence of meteorological disasters poses a serious challenge to crop production. Analyzing and evaluating agricultural multi-hazard meteorological disaster risks based on historical disaster data and a summary of disaster occurrences and development patterns are important bases for the effective reduction of natural disaster risks and the regulation of agricultural production. This paper explores the technical system of agricultural multi-hazard meteorological disaster risk assessment and establishes a disaster risk assessment model based on the historical disaster data at the regional level from 1978–2020 in the first national comprehensive natural disaster risk census, carrying out multi-hazard meteorological disaster risk assessments in 18 major grain-producing regions in Jilin province. The empirical evidence shows: (1) drought and flood disasters are the key disasters for agricultural meteorological disaster prevention in Jilin province. Hotspots of drought and flood disasters are widely distributed in the study area, while hail and typhoons are mainly concentrated in the eastern region with a certain regionality. (2) The risk values of the four major meteorological disasters all decreased with the increase of the disaster index. Under the same disaster index, the disaster risk of various disasters in the main grain-producing areas is as follows: drought > flood > typhoon > hail. Under different disaster indices, Jiutai, Nongan, Yitong, Tongyu, and other places all presented high and medium–high risk levels. (3) From the spatial evolution trend, along with the rising disaster index, the risk of multi-hazard meteorological hazards is spatially oriented in a southeastern direction, and the risk level of multi-hazard meteorological hazards in the central part of the study area decreases gradually along with the increasing damage index. In addition, regional agricultural multi-hazard meteorological disaster risk reduction recommendations are made in three aspects: institutional construction, management model, and reduction capacity.

Meta-Analysis ELECTRE III and AHP in Evaluating and Ranking the Urban Resilience

Recently, climate change has become more visible, with weather extremes and natural disasters causing more economic damage than ever before. Given all the factors that threaten the dynamic ecological balance, it is very important to ask whether there is a possibility to assess the sustainability of some territorial units using technical and scientific criteria. Is there a method to assert that one community or municipality is more resilient than another and to explain all of this? Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is the most appropriate theory best applied to such complex decisions. MCDA methods are used to assess "if and how resilient my city is". Previous methodological frameworks for urban sustainability have been created and presented in the literature, and most of them use the AHP technique. These methods form a hierarchy of decision-making problems with criteria and alternatives (cities, communities), and the latter are evaluated based on how well they meet the criteria. This paper aims to assess the urban resilience of Durres County, Albania, and its regions and municipalities that share the same urban and geographical characteristics using the AHP and Electre III methods. This city has been studied, analyzed, and evaluated because it has a history of natural disasters and is in a very dangerous area for some indicators. The results of the study concluded that the district, its regions, and communes are at high risk of flooding due to torrential rains accompanied by river floods, erosion of agricultural lands and the coast, as well as other natural risks, and need significant improvements to cope with them. Albania and the region of Durres have been involved over the years in several national and international projects to improve urban sustainability and resilience. However, the assessment and improvement of urban sustainability should always be an ongoing process.

About the Recent Chilean Immigration Phenomenon: A Scoping Review on Radiographic Methods for Dental Age Estimation in Children

The objective of this review was to identify original studies describing radiographic methods for dental age estimation applied in Chilean children, considering that it is a country with a long history of natural disasters and it has shown an unprecedented increase in the number of migrants in recent years, with significant percentages of individuals under 18 years of age. A scoping review was carried out following the methodology for the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping reviews and PRISMA guidelines. A specific search strategy was implemented in PubMed/Medline database, with complementary use of the Google Scholar website searching for full articles in English and Spanish. Five documents responded to the search objective, of which only 3 were published in refereed journals. Two documents focused their study on the maturation of upper and lower third molars, one on the maturation of the second and lower third molars, and two documents on the maturation of the seven mandibular teeth according to classical methodologies. The scarce existing literature, the almost absence of validated methods for the Chilean population, as well as the reported mass immigration phenomenon make a new and profound scientific research approach necessary for the application of updated methods.

Establishment of indices for soybean low temperature damages in key growth stage in high cold region

Establishment of indices for low temperature damage of soybeans is important for systematically analyzing the adaptation strategies to climate change and collaborative adaptation technology for disaster prevention and mitigation and other stresses in high cold region. Based on historical data of low temperature damage and phenophase of soybean from 1980 to 2020 and daily temperature data from 78 meteorological stations in Heilongjiang Province, we used GIS to match the phenophase and meteorological data, by considering the accumulated temperature anomaly in different growth stages, and constructed a comprehensive soybean low temperature damages index (CSCDI) in high cold region. Using K-S distribution fitting test and the lower limit value of confidence intervals, we constructed the level index of soybean low temperature damage. The results showed that the CSCDI lower limits of mild, moderate and severe low temperature damage were 0.061, 0.115 and 0.237 from sowing to emergence stage, were 0.072, 0.152 and 0.312 from emergence to flowering, and 0.133, 0.245 and 0.412 from flowering to maturity, respectively. The time distribution of soybean low temperature damage inversed by CSCDI in Heilongjiang Province was consistent with the historical disaster records. The spatial distribution showed obvious latitude characteristics, with the frequency of low temperature damage increasing gradually from south to north.

Building damage detection from satellite images after natural disasters on extremely imbalanced datasets

Assessment of natural disasters caused damage(s) to buildings is important for rescue work coordination which, however, remains a difficult engineering task to be conducted effectively. To automatically detect building damages from satellite imagery, this paper presents a two-step solution approach, including building localization and damage classification. To handle the extremely imbalanced distributions of the building damages, where the minority class occupies less than 0.1%, the architecture is supplemented with a new learning strategy comprising normality-imposed data-subset generation and incremental training. The validity of the proposed architecture is evaluated on a recent open-source dataset named xBD. The experimental study achieves a testing accuracy of 0.9729 and an Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.5378 on three historical disaster events (i.e., “Mexico-earthquake”, “Midwest-flooding”, “Palu-tsunami”) for the localization analysis, and a testing accuracy of 0.9955 and a weighted F1-score of 0.9953 on the extracted building patches from “Mexico-earthquake”, for the followed classification analysis

Introducing Stories Into Downward Counterfactual Analysis: Examples From a Potential Mediterranean Disaster

How to recognise potential disasters is a question at the centre of risk analysis. Over-reliance on an incomplete, often epistemologically-biased, historical record, and a focus on quantified and quantifiable risks, have contributed to unanticipated disasters dominating both casualties and financial losses in the first part of the 21st century. Here we present the findings of an online workshop implementing a new scenario-planning method, called downward counterfactual analysis, which is designed to expand the range of risks considered. Interdisciplinary groups of disaster researchers constructed downward counterfactuals for a present-day version of the 365CE Cretan earthquake and tsunami, imagining how these events might have been worse. The resulting counterfactuals have trans-national, long-term impacts, particularly in terms of economic losses, and connect risks previously identified in separate sectors. Most counterfactuals involved socio-political factors, rather than intrinsic components of the hazard, consistent with the idea that there are “no natural disasters”. The prevalence of cascading counterfactuals in our workshop suggests that further work is required to give the appropriate weight to pre-existing economic and social conditions in scenario-planning methods, such as downward counterfactual analysis, which focus on the occurrence of a hazard as the temporal starting point for a disaster. Both proposed counterfactuals and their justifications reflect a bias towards contemporary issues and recent historical disasters. We suggest that interdisciplinary groups can expand the range of imagined risks. However, the setup used here would be improved by including local stakeholders. Qualitative forms of downward counterfactual analysis have potential applications for community engagement and education, as well as for risk analysis.

Mini Special Issue on Studies of Historical and Archaeological Materials for Disaster Research

Japan is a country that experiences a considerable number of natural disasters. It sees frequent seismic and volcanic activity because it is located on the boundaries of multiple plates. In addition, the temperate monsoon climate brings heavy rains and therefore floods and landslides. Since ancient times, the Japanese have repeatedly recovered from various natural disasters. That history has much to teach those living alive now. In Japan, observation systems for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have been set up, and research based on the records of these instruments is actively being done. However, some earthquakes and eruptions repeat at intervals of hundreds of years, making the investigation of historical and archaeological materials essential if the true circumstances of such natural events and damage they caused are to be learned. A part of the historical disaster research currently being conducted in Japan is presented in this mini special issue. This mini special issue contains four papers. Ebara’s paper, taking up the ways in which artificial development has transformed the topography in the last 500 years, considers the relationship between the original topography and the damage caused by typhoons. Kaneko’s contribution considers the damage sustained by one village that was hit by the tsunami that resulted from the great earthquake in the early 18th century. Kaneko surveys archaeological sites and tombstones that reveal that many of the victims were women and children. Sugimori et al. elucidate the exact time of the great earthquake in the 19th century by using historical materials written in Japanese, English, and Russian. Along with the importance of comparing and contrasting various literatures, the work teaches us that disasters have no borders. Murata proposes a method of utilizing archaeological excavations in earthquake research. It also presents a case in which the condition of the ground, which cannot be understood by surface observation alone, is estimated from traces of a disaster. From these papers, readers can learn the potential of historical and archaeological materials in disaster research.

The Construction of the Historical Disaster Evidence Database and its Effectiveness

Evidence of past earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods has been discovered during archaeological excavations. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (hereafter referred to as “NABUNKEN”) has been constructing and releasing the “Historical Disaster Evidence Database” constructed upon Geographic Information System (GIS; hereafter referred to as “HDE-GISdb”) by compiling disaster evidence information from excavation sites throughout Japan. Through this initiative, we aim to build an information infrastructure that will facilitate not only the elucidation of disaster occurrence mechanisms and local disaster histories but also disaster prevention and mitigation research. This paper discusses the effectiveness of HDE-GISdb using a case study of the Palace and Capital of Nagaoka sites in Kyoto Prefecture to visualize potential hazards, which cannot be read from topography, by disaster evidence recorded in Holocene and Pleistocene deposits.