DRRM Week 3: Hazard, Risk and Disaster

What is Risk?

The risk in geography is defined as the likelihood of a hazard event occurring and creating the loss. It is the actual exposure of something of human value to a hazard and is often measured as the product of the probability of an event happening and potential loss.

 (Source:http://www.backgroundalpha.com/Images/Combinaison_englais.jpg)

Difference between Hazard and Disaster?

Hazard is a naturally occurring or human induced process which has a potential to create a loss. Disaster is an actual event which has severely impacted people, communities, and systems.  Hazard is primarily understood in a physical dimension whereas disaster has social dimensions. For instance, avalanche or flood in a remote Himalayan mountain is just a hazard but if it impacts downstream population and societies, it becomes a disaster.

Hazard, Risk and Disaster in Nepali context:

Nepal is situated in an active tectonic belt. The Indian tectonic plate is submerging towards Tibetan plate and hence still raising. As it is the youngest mountain in the world, natural processes are active in the region. Hence, landslides, floods, earthquakes, snow avalanche, soil erosion etc. are common which is further intensified by the concentrated south Asian monsoonal process. In addition, more than 30 million people are living in the country. As most of the high mountain regions are not livable due to permanent snow, population are concentrated in marginal locations of hills and southern plains of the country. The dependency of the people in the limited resources has exposed them to disproportionate risk to natural disasters. The recent development pattern such as road construction and infrastructure development has added more risks. These crisscrossed mountains are hampered by such processes. As a result, the landslide is the deadliest disaster in terms of natural hazard mortality while people often consider that earthquake and floods are notorious. The natural process and exposure of the societies to the natural process make the Nepal one of the vulnerable countries in the world.

A rural house destroyed by April 25, 2015 Earthquake

Short-term and long-term physical, environmental, and economic impacts of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hit the northeast coastal areas of Japan. This earthquake, commonly called as Tohoku earthquake, generated massive tsunami wave resulting coastal inundation in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures, and most importantly, nuclear meltdown of Fukushima nuclear plant. Hence, this triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear) killed so many people. As of August 10, 2015, 15, 892 people are killed, 6,152 people are injured and 2,573 people are still missing¹. About 124,664 buildings were completely devastated whereas 274,641 buildings were partially collapsed having significant impacts on other infrastructures as well. This disaster damaged 116 bridges, 4,198 section of roads, 29 segments of railways and induced 207 landslides in the affected region.

The striking difference of this earthquake is the nuclear power plant crisis. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1984, this event created heated debates about the dependency of energy supply on nuclear power. Also, concerns were raised worldwide regarding the safety standards to combat such mega events. Krausmann and Cruz (2013)² studied the impacts of earthquake and tsunami on chemical industry where they concluded that this event dramatically highlighted the vulnerability to natural hazard triggered technological (Natech) accidents of a well prepared countries like Japan and suggested to revisit the current practices and policies to safeguard surroundings from such facilities. The same report highlights the disproportionate impact of chemical industries in the different location within the affected region. For instance, no lives were lost in Chiba industrial complex while four people were killed in Sendai refinery.

2015 Gorkha Earthquake and its impact on Nepalese economy

On April 25, 2015, Nepal was struck by 7.6 magnitude earthquake during noon having epicenter 75 km west to the capital town Kathmandu. The catastrophic earthquake claimed about 9,000 lives and injured about 23,000 people throughout the country. So far, more than 400 aftershocks greater than 4.0 magnitudes are recorded, including 6.8 on May 12 which further exacerbated the situation. Out of 75 districts, 31 districts are affected and14 districts including capital town are worst hit.

More than a million houses are destroyed by the earthquake. Mostly traditional buildings in the rural districts are reduced to rubble. Historical monuments, temples, and shrines are destroyed. The tourism sector is heavily impacted as there was a big avalanche in the Everest and Langtang regions. The only highway connecting Nepal and China was obstructed causing huge loose on bilateral trades. 

Preliminary seismic risk assessment of Dharan city in eastern Nepal using Landsat images

Poster presentation at 2015 GIS and Remote Sensing Research Symposium, Virginia Tech

April 10, 2015

Nepal lies in the southern slopes of the Himalayan range, which is one of the most active mountain ranges in the world. The Himalayan range was formed due to collisions between the Indian and Tibetan plates. As a result, there is a presence of active faults that pose constant threats of the earthquake in the country. Nepal has a long history of destructive earthquakes each occurring in 100 years interval. The latest hit was on August 20, 1988, which devastated the entire Eastern region and part of the Central regions. It was 6.5 magnitude in Richter scale. It claimed 721 human lives, injured 6,553 people and damaged other developmental infrastructures (Nepal Disaster Report 2011). Earthquake risk and vulnerability assessment are primarily based on two things: location and magnitude of earthquakes, and pattern of human settlement and building types. So far, we have good understanding about the active seismic zones but we cannot accurately predict the magnitude and time of the earthquake. Hence, to minimize the earthquake risk, we need to reduce the social vulnerability related with human settlement and building types. This work aims to understand how the human settlement has been increased in one of the eastern city of Nepal, Dharan, using Landsat sequential images and are exposed to constant threat of earthquake risk.

To download poster pdf: https://goo.gl/fKIMaU

#Hokies4Nepal: Earthquake 2015 fundraising campaign

We, Nepalese Student Association at Virginia Tech are coordinating the fund-raising program at Blacksburg campus to help communities at Nuwakot district. Nuwakot is one of the hardest hit districts, north to capital city Kathmandu. So far, about 1,100 lives are claimed, about 1,500 people injured, and 60,000 houses are completely destroyed.

(Photo: Devi Gnyawali)

The details of the fundraising campaign can be found at 

http://www.nepal.org.vt.edu/nepalearthquake2015/

Scholarships for Risk Masters at Durham University

Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR) in conjunction with Collingwood College, Durham University is offering ONE international and FOUR  tuition fee scholarships to pursue Masters degree in Risk and Hazards. The interested candidates who are planning to study in 2014 can apply in one of the courses below.

•  MSc in Risk and Environmental Hazard
•  MA in Risk and Security
• MA in Risk, Health and Public Policy 

SAVE the Real TIGER

Shashank Poudel

Reblogged from Ban Paley

As an urban youth living a fairly advantageous life what does tiger mean to most of us? A question we need to ask ourselves if we are to protect nature’s magnificent treasury. Probably for youngsters in Kathmandu or Bharatpur tiger means a dangerous beast. We feared it in our zoo visits and still watch a documentary in National Geographic channel but we don’t know what benefits of conserving it are. Why would we care for its survival? Do we know what the plight of the tiger is? We don’t know that our future is in peril if we fail to save the tiger from extinction.

Royal Bengal Tiger (Photo: Tiger Conservation Network Facebook Page)

नव बर्ष २०७० सालको शुभकामना !!!

नयाँ बर्ष बिक्रम सम्बत २०७० शुरु हुन लाग्दै छ । हुन त नेपालमा शुरु पनि भईसक्यो । आफु झण्डै ५ घण्टा पछाडी भएकोले मात्रै अझै पनि “Eve” कै मुडमा छु । यतिखेर म अघिल्लो बर्ष २०६९ लाई स्वागत गर्दाको क्षणहरुलाई सम्झदै छु । एक दर्जन साथिहरु मिलेर २०६९ लाई स्वागत गर्न हामी काठमाडौ उपत्यकाबाट नजिकै चिसापानी पदयात्रामा गएका थियौ । दिनभरको थकानलाई वास्ता नगरी नाचगान र मधुपानमा झुमेका थियौ । अहिले यसो सम्झेर ल्याउदा त बढो रमाईलो पो गरिएको रै’छ त ! खै कस्तो खालको मानबिय स्वभाब हो, सम्झनाका पोकाहरु फुकाउदा ति यादहरु असरल्ल भएर अझ बढि रमाईला, आनन्ददायक र रोमाञ्चक पो लाग्ने गर्छन । अरुलाई कस्तो महशुस हुने गर्छ कुन्नि, म भने ति असरल्ल यादहरुलाई हेरे अलि धेरै नै रम्ने गर्छु र फेरि सँगाल्दै पोको पार्ने गर्छु। 

Flooding and agent-based modeling (ABM)

When we talk about computer modeling, the language used is so tough to understand and full of jargons. If you are beginner, it’s almost impossible to get through it. This is what I felt when I tried to understand about hydrological modeling, in particular, flood modeling. The flooding events around the globe often come with message that the related information are not efficiently communicated during and after the event.

 

While discussing these issues I found one interesting paper about agent-based flood modeling by Dawson et. al. 2011 entitled “An agent based model for risk-based flood incident management” published in Natural Hazards. The more interesting stuff is this 4:19 minute long YouTube video which explains how this model works. To my knowledge this kind of video is not common explaining about how it works. If you are interested about the model itself, you can follow this link to Newcastle University page.

 

 

 

Full citation of paper: Dawson, R.J., Peppe, R. and Wang, M. 2011. An Agent-based Model for Risk-based Flood Incident Management. Natural Hazards, 59(1): 167-189



 

Report about 'The Arab Spring and Climate Change'

It is always interesting to learn about the connection between natural sciences and social sciences. And for me, it is even more exciting to learn the impact of the greatest challenge of human kind 'Climate Change' with historic political movement the 'Arab Spring' happened in the Arab world. In this connection, I found one report which tries to establish a link between the Arab Spring and Climate Change.

 

In 2012, Troy Sternberg, a scholar of Oxford University, published an article in Applied Geography Volume 34 (519-524) entitled “Chinese drought, bread and the Arab Spring” in which he argues that the Arab spring was a result of increased wheat price in the international market due to winter drought in eastern china which might be caused by climate change. 

 

 Photo: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2013/02/28/54579/the-arab-spring-and-climate-change/

 

Another report published in February 2013 by Centre for American Progress and Centre for Climate and Security entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series” is a collection of five different articles in climate change, conflict, and economy that are edited by Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia. The report highlights Climate Change as a stressor  and indirectly argue that the Arab Spring was caused by Climate Change. In addition, the essays compiled in this report give a clear sense of relation between climate change in terms of record winter drought in China and its subsequent global wheat shortages, and civil unrest in Egypt stimulated by increased price of wheat in the market.