Why is history important in understanding natural hazards

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Tellus 9 1 — Paper presented at the 11th canadian conference on building science and technology, Banff, Alberta, 21—23 March More recently, post-event reconnaissance investigations have provided new, fundamental knowledge essential for the development of computational models to simulate the physical and socioeconomic impacts of natural hazards, and for identifying ways that communities can restore their infrastructure, rebuild their built environment, and recover their socioeconomic capital e.

Natural hazards, such as wind events i. Therefore, reconnaissance data must be collected soon after an event occurs. These data are also unique because they inherently include the real-world complexities e. Reconnaissance data, once collected, processed, curated, and archived Rathje et al.

In the past, reconnaissance investigators collected data and documented field observations using conventional recording and measurement tools, such as photography, note-taking, and surveying Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance [GEER], Today, the availability of state-of-the-art instrumentation, mobile data collection technologies e.

This article briefly reviews the current state of natural hazards and disaster reconnaissance, including highlights from recent missions, difficulties teams face, and opportunities for progress. It then examines the grand challenges facing the natural hazards community and presents new approaches to meet these challenges through the strategic design, planning, and execution of reconnaissance campaigns. Many of the ideas presented in the article were developed with input from key stakeholders, including participants of a 2-day reconnaissance workshop, previous and current users of RAPID facility instrumentation, and other disciplinary experts in the professional, government, and academic sectors.

The history of natural hazard and disaster investigations spans many centuries. Scholars often used these data in an attempt to reconcile extreme events with spiritual beliefs and religious concepts. Lawson and Reid comprehensive, two-volume report on the San Francisco, California earthquake Figure 1 is one of the first rigorous scientific field studies of a major natural hazard Ellsworth, A decade later, Prince conducted one of the first social sciences investigations of an extreme event, the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada explosion of a munitions ship in the city harbor.

Social sciences studies of disasters became more systematic and formalized in the s through the s, largely due to work at the Disaster Research Center Ohio State University , which was initially supported by the U.

Office of Civil Defense to inform cold war civil defense efforts e. Earthquake Engineering Research Institute [EERI] conducted one of the first in-depth multidisciplinary investigations of a natural hazard event, the San Fernando, California earthquake. Figure 1. The Lawson and Reid reconnaissance investigation of the San Francisco earthquake led to significant scientific and engineering advancements. This observation led to the development of the theory of elastic rebound Reid, Both images are reproduced from Lawson and Reid The EERI was one of the first professional organizations to formalize regular reconnaissance investigations of major seismic events by establishing the Learning from Earthquakes LFE program in Largely multidisciplinary in its approach, the LFE program deploys teams of geoscientists, engineers, and social scientists to investigate and observe the damaging effects of significant earthquakes worldwide.

With the support of the U. GEER authorizes research missions based upon i the opportunity to learn about new scientific hypotheses or engineering models, ii the availability of additional field data e. There are other natural hazards reconnaissance organizations based at professional societies worldwide. The Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team EEFIT , based in the United Kingdom, supports earthquake reconnaissance missions with the goals of making technical assessments, collecting geological and seismological data, assessing the effectiveness of earthquake protection systems, and investigating disaster management procedures and socioeconomic impacts Stone et al.

Italy hosts two organizations that have organized earthquake reconnaissance missions and conducted follow-on seismic policy analyses e. Other organizations, such as the Nepalese Engineering Society, the Building Research Institute of Japan, among others, also conduct investigations in the region.

In addition to these organizations, self-organized teams sometimes form in the aftermath of an event, often with a focused hypothesis-driven research question or inquiry, to collect data. Table 1 summarizes the objectives and outcomes of recent reconnaissance investigations of several representative natural hazard events. Figures 2 through 5 present field data collected during several of the missions highlighted in Table 1.

Table 1. Examples of reconnaissance approach, objectives, and outcomes from several recent earthquake and wind hazard missions Figure 2. Figure 2. Assessing the performance of buildings using lidar data collected during reconnaissance. Reproduced from Wood P. Figure 3. Reconnaissance investigation of the impact of rockfalls on dwellings during the Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquakes. A Lidar data was collected inside and outside buildings, geo-registered, then fusing into a single 3D model.

B Field data reveals a direct correlation between rockfall impact energy and rock penetration into buildings. Modified from Grant et al. Figure 4. Diagram depicting damage features, secondary effects, and human and societal impacts that commonly result from an extreme wind event.

The diagram is similar to Figure 7 , illustrating the commonalities between seismic and wind natural hazard events. Diagrams and inset images are as noted in Figure 7. Figure 5. Diagram illustrating damage features, secondary effects, and human and societal impacts that often result from a significant earthquake blue illustrations and accompanying text. Superimposed above this hypothetical post-event landscape are annotations linking instrumentation shown with inset photographs and data collections activities and products shown in red to event features.

By enabling the prompt collection of high-resolution data sets, advanced reconnaissance instrumentation now plays a central role in providing the academic, research, and professional communities with an unprecedented volume of high-quality, open-source, engineering, geophysical, social, and behavioral data. In addition, new software and cyberinfrastructure tools allow complex data sets to be archived, integrated, explored, and visualized Rathje et al.

These computational resources facilitate collaboration among experts across different fields to support advancements at the intersections of the natural hazards specialty disciplines. High-resolution georeferenced laser, image, and video data collected from full fields of view i.

Such models can be safely interrogated to extensive detail by geographically distributed research teams—an aspect that allows investigators the time and vision to collaboratively continue to discover new and important aspects of the impact of the surveyed event Olsen and Kayen, ; Olsen et al.

These types of terrestrial data sets are increasingly being fused with broader scale satellite imagery to appreciate the regional context for damage at a specific site e. Over the past decade, a portfolio of highly sophisticated natural hazards models has significantly improved our ability to simulate the effects of extreme events across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales e. These natural hazards models have become increasingly data-driven, requiring comprehensive data sets to capture complex, system-level responses.

Examples of such models include performance-based earthquake engineering PBEE design methods and resilience-based design methods e. These data sets help advance our fundamental understanding of natural hazards and their impacts.

Examples of reconnaissance data collection required to improve the natural hazards modeling and simulation include the following:. Figure 6. Grand challenges for the natural hazards community require new strategic approaches for reconnaissance data collection utilizing RAPID instrumentation and services.

This data collection will produce data products that are needed to meet grand challenges. Lifelines and other elements of the built environments are ultimately socio-technical systems Miles et al. That is, there are core social, economic, and behavioral components to the development, operation, and maintenance of all engineered systems.

There is a crucial need for research to better unpack and quantify the socio-technical dimensions related to damage, restoration, and reconstruction of elements of the built environment. This research is needed to advance existing socio-technical loss e. Most socio-technical modeling efforts to date have focused on modeling losses. Development of high-resolution, geocoded data sets, such as aerial photography, lidar, and ground-based documentation of post-event damage e. Modern catastrophe risk models ultimately seek to project damage, loss, and recovery time at the whole-building, infrastructure system, or regional scale; examples modeling tools include FEMA as well as the community and regional resilience modeling tools such as OpenQuake Pagani et al.

These tools predict building performance through the aggregation of component failures e. These simulation tools include numerous assumptions regarding probabilistic structural component capacities, load paths, the influence of aging, and cascading damage from neighboring structures.

Thus, they benefit substantially from refinements to these assumptions informed by detailed geocoded field data stratified by building code and localized hazard intensity. Provision of appropriate data to test, verify, and calibrate co-seismic landslide displacement models [e.

Specifically, advanced geomatics technologies such as lidar could capture intricate ground deformation patterns and landslide morphological features, eroded quickly after an event. There are relatively few high-quality case histories of co-seismic landslide displacement, which represents a pressing research need in the field of geotechnical earthquake engineering Harp et al.

Provision of the appropriate data to quantify underlying physical phenomena and to develop, validate, improve, and reduce uncertainty in physics-based, computational modeling of wind, waves, storm surge, tsunami inundation, sediment transport, morphological change, and other related processes representing the inter-related, destructive forcing mechanisms of natural hazards Kennedy et al.

Specifically, modern reconnaissance instrumentation can capture rare, but critical, perishable data during and following natural hazards, including the quantification of inundation extent, flow speeds, flow depth, wave conditions, wind speeds, soil properties, erosion and accretion, and inundation-related damage to civil infrastructure and the natural environment Kennedy et al.

These data help improve understanding of, for example, a the interplay between the natural landscape land cover, topographic features , the built environment critical infrastructure, homes , and hydrodynamics and b how and when concurrent multi-hazard components e.

Simulation of structural response to ground shaking is validated mainly through comparison with data from experiments in controlled laboratory environments and with data collected from reconnaissance following earthquakes.

The structural models may be focused on component behaviors, building behaviors, or even the behavior of entire classes of buildings through the development of fragility functions. Recent examples of field data informing advances in local structural behavior models include Kanvinde et al. At the macro-level, fragility functions derived from reconnaissance data on the performance of wood-frame buildings have resulted in large-scale loss estimations for San Francisco arising from the soft-story collapse of wood-frame structures and spurred public policy to encourage retrofit FEMA, In , the National Research Council convened a community workshop to identify grand challenges for earthquake engineering.

These challenges served to guide research after the conclusion of the George E. Brown, Jr. While the title of the workshop highlighted earthquake engineering, the NRC steering committee noted that the identified grand challenges community resilience, decision making, simulation, mitigation, design tools were broad and also pertained to other natural and anthropogenic hazards.

These grand challenges are adopted here as an overarching framework for identifying reconnaissance research opportunities for natural hazards and disaster research communities. To better understand the direct and indirect impacts of natural hazards events, a framework is needed to measure, monitor, and evaluate community-level resilience. The lack of historical data on community impacts and recovery following past disasters presents a significant impediment to meeting this goal National Research Council [NRC], Advanced reconnaissance instrumentation helps address this challenge by enabling the systematic collection and archiving integrated, interdisciplinary data pertinent to engineering and the natural and social sciences.

This knowledge is necessary to evaluate the utility and validity of the range of community resilience frameworks—a significant gap in the state-of-the-art in disaster science and engineering Miles, Computational simulation and forecasting of the timing and regional distribution of the hazard itself e. Such simulations—which span a range of temporal scales, including both short-term e.

However, such simulations are highly complex and require extensive hypervariable data sets for model development and testing. Since many of these models are inherently data-driven, they also require high-quality data e. Renewal and retrofit strategies are essential to mitigate hazards posed to infrastructure systems and communities e.

The development of effective mitigation strategies requires computational models see above , design methods, and construction standards that, when harmonized, are capable of identifying critical vulnerabilities and quantifying the impacts of risk reduction measures.

In addition, post-event data are needed to evaluate loss estimation methodologies, such as HAZUS-MH, investigate the efficacy of mitigation approaches e. New multiscale data collection tools provide the means to address these needs. Statistical analysis of some types of events for specific locations allow one to determine the return period or recurrence interval. Although we as humans have not had the opportunity fortunately of observing large asteroid or meteorite impacts, the data suggest that impacts of large asteroids 1 km or larger occurs only once every 10 million years.

Those with magnitudes greater than 8. Are natural disasters becoming more frequent as it seems from news reports of recent activity? But, this suggests some other important questions before we start making conclusions about the end of the world:. First, Is the frequency of hazardous events increasing? This is much more difficult to answer since natural events responsible for natural disasters have been occurring throughout the 4.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence to suggest that hazardous events are occurring more frequently. What about global warming? There is evidence to suggest that weather related disasters are becoming more frequent, compared to other disasters like earthquakes.

For example, the frequency of disasters from tropical cyclones and floods has been increasing, the frequency of earthquakes has changed little. Although this is what we expect from global warming, there is not yet enough statistical data to prove this right now. Second, is there another explanation for the the frequency of natural disasters increasing? First consider the following facts:.

Human population has been increasing at an exponential rate. With more people, vulnerability increases because there are more people to be affected by otherwise natural events. These are areas most vulnerable to natural hazards such as tropical cyclones, tsunami, and, to some extent, earthquakes. Our ability to communicate news of natural disasters has been increasing, especially since the invention of the internet.

Earlier in human history there may have been just as many disasters, but there were few ways the news of such disasters could be communicated throughout the world. Meanwhile: Deaths from natural disasters has decreased in developed countries and increased in developing countries. What could explain this? Cultural Differences? The cost of natural disasters has been increasing in developed countries. This course is not about the political, cultural, or economic aspects of natural disasters.

It is about the science of natural disasters and how can use our knowledge of the scientific aspects of disasters to reduce the death and destruction caused by otherwise natural events. The textbook selected for this course uses 5 fundamental concepts in the study of natural hazards and disasters:. We will discuss each of these concepts for each of the hazards we study.

Examples of questions on this material that could be asked on an exam. Natural Disasters. Natural Hazards and Natural Disasters A natural hazard is a threat of a naturally occurring event will have a negative effect on humans. Most hazardous process are also Geologic Processes.

Geologic processes effect every human on the Earth all of the time, but are most noticeable when they cause loss of life or property. If the process that poses the hazard occurs and destroys human life or property, then a natural disaster has occurred. Among the natural hazards and possible disasters to be considered are:. All of these processes have been operating throughout Earth history, but the processes have become hazardous only because they negatively affect us as human beings.

Important Point - There would be no natural disasters if it were not for humans. Reprints and Permissions. Bwambale, B. The essential contribution of indigenous knowledge to understanding natural hazards and disaster risk: historical evidence from the Rwenzori Uganda.

Nat Hazards Download citation. Received : 18 June Accepted : 26 August Published : 03 September Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Abstract The integration of indigenous knowledge into understanding disasters from natural hazards is hitherto hampered by the limited conceptualization of the process that shapes indigenous knowing.

Graphic abstract Indigenous knowledge construction framework and its influencing factors in practice. In: The development outlook, pp 71—73 Bwambale B, Muhumuza M, Nyeko M Traditional ecological knowledge and flood risk management: a preliminary case study of the Rwenzori.

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