Integrated platform to assess seismic resilience at the community level

Due to the increasing frequency of disastrous events, the challenge of creating large-scale simulation models has become of major significance. Indeed, several simulation strategies and methodologies have been recently developed to explore the response of communities to natural disasters. Such models can support decision-makers during emergency operations allowing to create a global view of the emergency identifying consequences. An integrated platform that implements a community hybrid model with real-time simulation capabilities is presented in this paper. The platform's goal is to assess seismic resilience and vulnerability of critical infrastructures (e.g., built environment, power grid, socio-technical network) at the urban level, taking into account their interdependencies. Finally, different seismic scenarios have been applied to a large-scale virtual city model. The platform proved to be effective to analyze the emergency and could be used to implement countermeasures that improve community response and overall resilience

Students' evacuation behavior during an emergency at schools:A systematic literature review

Disasters and emergencies frequently happen, and some of them require population evacuation. Children can be severely affected during evacuations due to their lower capability to analyze, perceive, and answer disaster risks. Although several studies attempted to address the safety of children during the evacuation, the existing literature lacks a systematic review of students' evacuation behavior during school time. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to explore how students' evacuation behavior during school time has been addressed by previous scholars and identify gaps in knowledge. The review process included three steps: formulating the research question, establishing strategic search strategies, and data extraction and analysis. The studies have been identified by searching academic search engines and refined the recognized publications unbiasedly. The researchers have then thematically analyzed the objectives and findings of the selected studies resulting in the identification of seven themes in the field of students' evacuation behavior during school time. Finally, the study put forward suggestions for future research directions to efficiently address the recognized knowledge gaps.</p

Method to extract difficult-to-evacuate areas by using tsunami evacuation simulation and numerical analysis

Extracting the area where people have difficulty evacuating (hereafter difficult-to-evacuate areas, DEA) when tsunamis hit after an earthquake is important for effective disaster mitigation measures. The DEA was conven-tionally extracted by simply considering the walking speed, distance to the evacuation destination, and time needed for evacuation after considering the estimated tsunami inundation area. However, evaluating the DEA from such a simple scheme is insufficient because the behavior of residents and the road conditions to the evacuation destinations after an earthquake are not properly reflected in the scheme. In this study, agent-based tsunami evacuation simulations that can reflect the behavior of residents and real -time changes in the situation were conducted in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico. It is a prime sightseeing destination under the high risk of megathrust events in the Guerrero Gap. First, by checking the simulation images at the tsunami arrival time, bottleneck locations were identified, and five additional models with different measures for the bottleneck locations were constructed and tested to find the best model with 195 casualties. Then, focusing on the best model, three indices for the casualties were proposed to extract the DEA effectively and quantitatively, and numerical analyses using the three indices was conducted. Finally, the subdistrict in the center of the target area (subdistrict 5) was quantitatively found to be the district that should be given the highest priority for measures. Moreover, an example model with a new measure in subdistrict 5 was validated to have 101 casualties. The key points for applying the proposed method for extraction of DEA in other areas are summarized

3D City Models and urban information: Current issues and perspectives

Considering sustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban or environmental issues. 3D city models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Could these 3D City models be used to integrate urban and environmental knowledge? How could they be improved to fulfill such role? We believe that enriching the semantics of current 3D city models, would extend their functionality and usability; therefore, they could serve as integration platforms of the knowledge related to urban and environmental issues allowing a huge and significant improvement of city sustainable management and development. But which elements need to be added to 3D city models? What are the most efficient ways to realize such improvement / enrichment? How to evaluate the usability of these improved 3D city models? These were the questions tackled by the COST Action TU0801 “Semantic enrichment of 3D city models for sustainable urban development”. This book gathers various materials developed all along the four year of the Action and the significant breakthroughs

Risk analysis for flood event management

PhD ThesisFlood risk management seeks to reduce flood consequences and probability by considering a wide range of options that include non-structural measures such as flood event management. Quantitative flood risk analysis has provided a powerful tool to support appraisal and investment in engineered flood defence. However, analysing the risks and benefits of non-structural measures have been limited making it difficult to compare the benefits of a wide range of options on a shared assessment platform. A major challenge to understand the performance of non-structural measures during a flood event is the complexity of analysing the human responses in the system that determines the successful operation of flood event management. Here presents a risk analysis approach that couples a multi-agent simulation of individual and organizational behaviour with a hydrodynamic model. The model integrates remotely sensed information on topography, buildings and road networks with empirical survey data and information on local flood event management strategies to fit characteristics of specific communities. The model has been tested in Towyn, North Wales, and subsequently used to analyse the effectiveness of flood event management procedures, including flood warning and evacuation procedures in terms of potential loss of life , economic damages and the identification of roads susceptible to congestion. The potential loss of life increases according to the magnitude of a storm surge (e.g. 11 for 1 in 100 years surges as opposed to 94 for 1 in 1000 surges). Providing 3 hours flood warning can reduce this by 67% if individuals take appropriate action. A global sensitivity analysis shows that hydrodynamic processes are only responsible for 50% of the variance in expected loss of life because actions taken by individuals and society can greatly influence the outcome. The model can be used for emergency planners to improve flood response in a flood event.EPSRC studentshi