News in Japan - November

USA:
Mississippi River could leave farmland stranded

If the Mississippi River continues to go unchecked, the farmland on Dogtooth Bend peninsula may be only accessible by boat. According to a University of Illinois study, each successive flood carves a deeper channel across the narrow neck of the peninsula. This floodwater shortcut threatens to permanently reroute the Mississippi River, leaving Dogtooth Bend an island rather than a peninsula. Repeatedly repairing the levee breaches, building a bridge over the shortcut created by the flooding, or letting the Mississippi chart its own course are some solutions to the problem.

Netherlands: 

New Dutch drama, ‘if the levees breach’: http://www.npo.nl/series/artikelen/als-de-dijken-breken

Grand scale evacuations at Marken during 'crisis practice Waterwolf' (Dutch)

Website visualizing floods in the Netherlands: http://www.overstroomik.nl/

Cadzand-Beach most closely resembles Omaha Beach (Dutch) For the first time enormous Xblocs, an innovation of construction consortium BAM, are applied in the Netherlands. They must protect the hinterland from so-called super storms that may arise from a combination of sea level rise and climate change. The probability of such a super storm is 1 percent in a hundred years. That seems low, but without proper protection the flood damages can amount to more than one hundred billion euro. The three-dimensional shapes can be linked to each other similar to Lego-blocks, so that the connection of the resulting dam becomes extra strong. But by the openness persisting between the Xblocs, the barrier absorbs the enormous power of the super waves instead of being averted. The slender palisades also reduces the required material. A ‘small’ Xbloc consists of 1.5 cubic meters of concrete, a large one of 4 cubic meters. That is only one-third of the material which would be required for massive concrete blocks of the same size. "The gaps between the Xblocs creates space for all kinds of marine life. Small micro-organisms can settle here, but also fish and crabs find shelter. We considered mixing the concrete with shell grit, so that a large surface would be created with better adherence, but that was really too expensive." Research at Rijkswaterstaat in 2003 showed that the force with which the waves hit the shore is greater than previously thought. At nine locations along the Dutch coast dunes or dikes had to be reinforced to be able to withstand a superstorm. When Minister Schultz van Haegen (Infrastructure and Environment) formally closed the work in Cadzand today, all the weak links will have been restored.

Minor earthquake and tsunami

This morning we were awoken by an earthquake of magnitude 7.3, shindou 5- off the coast of Fukushima with some small aftershocks. Our phones immediately gave off tsunami warnings (1-3 meter). Several coastal towns have received evacuation warnings.

This map shows the locations and heights of tsunami waves in cm measured according to the JMA:

News in Japan - October

USA

Sandy's surge topped by 'rogue' 1950 storm in some areas

Colorado River Delta flows help birds, plants, groundwater

Other

Watersheds Lost Up to 22% of Their Forests in 14 Years. Here’s How it Affects Your Water Supply High erosion deteriorates water quality and reduces reservoir capacity, increasing the cost of water treatment and the risk of contamination. High erosion risk is usually linked to erodible soil, intense rainfall, steep topography and conversion of forest and other natural lands to pasture, cropland and more.

How fast will we need to adapt to climate change? Using sea-level rise as a case study, researchers at Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology have developed a quantitative model that considers different rates of sea-level rise, in addition to economic factors, and shows how consideration of rates of change affect optimal adaptation strategies. If the sea level will rise slowly, it could still make sense to build near the shoreline, but if the sea level is going to rise quickly, then a buffer zone along the shoreline might make more sense. "It is a very different thing to adapt to a sea level that is three feet higher if you think that sea level will rise no farther after that, than to adapt to a sea-level rise that is three feet higher with the expectation that the seas will keep rising," remarked Soheil Shayegh, a former Carnegie postdoc and lead author of the study.

Reservoirs play substantial role in global warming The world's reservoirs are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases, producing the equivalent of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, or 1.3 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans.

Evaluating forecasting models for predicting rainfall from tropical cyclones more than 50 percent of the deaths associated with hurricanes from 1970 to 2004 were caused by fresh water flooding. And from 1981 to 2011, hurricane damage accounted for almost half -- $417.9 billion -- of the total monetary damage from all weather and climate disasters during that same time period (adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars). Current models can forecast both where and how much rainfall a tropical cyclone will produce up to two days in advance. However, the forecast's accuracy decreased significantly when the prediction window increased to five days.

Hurricane Matthew is just the latest unnatural disaster to strike Haiti At least 1,000 people were killed when Hurricane Matthew battered the Tiburon peninsula in Haiti last week, destroying houses and displacing tens of thousands. Other experts describe disasters as “manifestations of unresolved development problems”. Therefore, disasters are not a natural phenomenon. Humans play a central role. As a result, a natural hazard such as Hurricane Matthew impacts each country in its path differently. We know that development, imposed by external forces that exploit the local labour force is not in the interest of the marginalised. A failure to respect human rights, local needs, the environment and human-environment relations simply creates disaster risk.

Scientists find link between tropical storms and decline of river deltas Lead researcher Professor Stephen Darby of the University of Southampton said: “Our study is the first to show the significant role tropical storms play in delivering sediment to large river deltas.  We show that although human impacts affect the amount of sediment in a river – cyclonic activity is also a very important contributing factor. These results are very significant because the Mekong’s sediment load is already declining as a result of upstream damming and other human impacts such as sand mining. Understanding the role played by changes in tropical cyclone climatology gives us a broader knowledge of the threats facing this delta and others like it around the world.” 

Greenland may be losing ice even faster than we thought

Receding glaciers in Bolivia leave communities at risk  A new study published in The Cryosphere, an European Geosciences Union journal, has found that Bolivian glaciers shrunk by 43% between 1986 and 2014, and will continue to diminish if temperatures in the region continue to increase. "On top of that, glacier recession is leaving lakes that could burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream," says lead-author Simon Cook, a lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.

Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 3

Our students this year are a diverse group of meteorologists, engineers, government officers, hydrologists, dam operators, infrastructure analysts, and researchers, coming from Brazil, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. As such we received a great diversity of suggestions during the interactive part of the lecture. For this part, I divided the students in three groups to each work on a different type of flood affecting the Netherlands: oceanic storm surges, river floods, and heavy precipitation. 

The goal of the exercise was to develop safe conditions for each type of flood, as integrated in the PAR model. This would allow students to actively familiarize themselves with the PAR model as preparation for their course assignments, stimulate group discussions, and have them consider the cross-cultural transferability of disaster risk reduction measures.

Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 2

To prepare students for their PAR model exercise, I explained briefly about the conditions in the Netherlands and the three types of flood we might face. Below is a selection of the presented slides. 

I developed a pressure model for floods in the Netherlands as shown below (click to enlarge). It was up to the students to develop safe conditions to increase the progression of safety, countering a different type of flood in the Netherlands.

Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 1

Along with now graduated Dr. Nasif Ahsan, I was invited to give a lecture to our new M.Sc. students as part of the course "Basic Concepts of Integrated Flood Risk management (IFRM)". This part of the course centers around the Pressure and Release (PAR) model, as developed by Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, and Ian Davis in their publication "At Risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters" (Routledge, London & NY, 2004). 

The concept behind the PAR model is that disasters occurs when societal vulnerability coincides with (natural) hazards.The only way to reduce risk is reduction of vulnerability, rather than the hazard itself. This concept is explained in the images below.

For the lecture we each focused on how the PAR model could be applied to our home countries, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. I added an interactive component in which the students developed their own version of the PAR model for floods in the Netherlands.

 

News in Japan - September

Japan

It seemed to miss Japan altogether before coming back with a vengeance: Typhoon LIONROCK (12W) Path as tracked by JAXA

More than 1,000 people still stranded in Iwate in typhoon’s wake An estimated 1,100 people remained stranded in eight municipalities in Iwate Prefecture and 17 were still missing late Thursday, two days after Typhoon Lionrock struck the region, killing 11. Police and Self-Defense Forces were rushing to rescue residents in the town of Iwaizumi, where the missing 17 lived. The town saw 10 people killed by flooding, including nine at a nursing home, when the storm hit on Tuesday. According to the town, most of the 17 people are elderly residents whose homes were inundated with floodwaters and whose access to roads was cut off, hampering efforts by municipal officials and welfare workers to confirm their safety. In Iwaizumi and the city of Kuji, also in Iwate, evacuation advisories were still in place for 15,780 households comprising 36,582 people on Thursday morning. The areas were still at high risk of mudslides. Water supplies and electricity had been cut off in many areas. The town decided to airlift 30 residents who needed dialysis treatment to hospitals in other municipalities, such as Morioka. Bad communication among government agencies has been partly blamed for delays in evacuations.

USA

Stalagmites in Indiana cave may record past earthquakes

Every September 11, I Remember This Surprising Story About Steve Buscemi

Earthquake rattles Oklahoma, six neighboring states

How FEMA Director Craig Fugate Wants to Reshape Disaster Management

Other

The earthquake in Italy: stereotyped narratives and missing social science

Deadly Italian quake highlights continuing struggle to communicate risk

How plant roots sense, react to soil flooding Researchers have just discovered a mechanism that allows a plant to adjust its water status and growth according to different soil flooding conditions. The results of this study describe how roots sense and respond to soil oxygen and potassium levels jointly, so as to change their water uptake capacity. Aside from their scientific importance, these findings could make it possible to optimize crop flood tolerance.

http://aqua-monitor.appspot.com/ Surface water changes (1985-2016). Green and blue colors represent areas where surface water changes occured during the last 30 years. Green pixels show where surface water has been turned into land (accretion, land reclamation, droughts). Blue pixels show where land has been changed into surface water (erosion, reservoir construction). The results of the analysis are published in: Donchyts et.al, 2016, Nature Climate Change

Earthquake potential revealed by tidal influence on earthquake size–frequency statistics

Vulnerable people

Floods severely affect children, young people Research with flood-affected children reveals serious impacts on well-being but also a desire to take on a role in flood risk management. Factors impacting on children's well-being include: loss of valued personal and family possessions, friendship networks, familiar spaces, education; experience of fear, anxiety, poverty, isolation, unfairness, destruction, stress, uncertainty, being ignored/misunderstood; lack of sleep and recreation; deterioration in diet, space and housing conditions; lack of flood education provision in schools for children and all staff. The study shows that having an active role in flood risk management actually helps with children's recovery. Yet current flood and emergency planning policy either ignores children or positions them as 'vulnerable', rather than treating them as citizens in their own right. The report proposes children should be given more information before, during and after flooding because they have a right to know how to prepare, what to expect and how they can contribute.