An overview of earthquake related liquefaction events in Italy

This report was prepared by Mr Edoardo Borgomeo during the summer pause of Imperial College (London, UK) lectures. Mr Borgomeo have joined the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (Italian Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology) for an internship under the supervision of Dr. Giuseppe Di Capua and Prof Silvia Peppoloni. This internship was an opportunity to gain an understanding on the functioning of a research institute and on the tasks a researcher has to undertake in the creation of a scientific publication. The result of the internship is presented in the following report that investigated the phenomenon of liquefaction under seismic conditions. The most serious direct effect of earthquakes on buildings and structures is ground shaking. However earthquake shocks might pose other hazards in the form of soil liquefaction, which can result in considerable financial losses. Some soils such as quicksands and quickclays can give rise to major problems when disturbed by ground shaking. The ground vibrations produced by an earthquake lead to a decrease in the effective stress and in the shear strength of the soil which in turn trigger the liquefaction

Reshaping Global Change Science for the 21st Century: Young Scientists’ Perspectives

Humanity is facing unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges. We ask what the role of the global science community should be in tackling these challenges. Increased awareness of the social context in which science is being produced; acceptance of the importance of controversy; and reflection around normative assumptions underlying research are needed. To help solve humanity’s grand challenges scientists need to move towards a transdisciplinary view of science where knowledge emerges from a collaborative environment and where young scientists are trained to work across disciplinary boundaries and engage with policy communities

Re-shaping Sustainability Science for the 21st Century: Young Scientists’ Perspectives

Humanity is facing unprecedented environmental, social and economic challenges. We ask what the role of the sustainability science community should be in tackling these challenges, focusing particularly on young scientists’ perspectives on the issue. On the basis of a questionnaire and a workshop with young scientists, we identify four major challenges facing humanity and develop three guidelines for sustainability science that seeks to address them. Results show that to help address humanity’s grand challenges, sustainability scientists need to move towards a trans-disciplinary system view of science and sustainability science problems. According to this view knowledge emerges from a collaborative and transdisciplinary environment and young scientists are trained to work across disciplinary boundaries and engage with policy communities

Quantifying climate risks to infrastructure systems: a comparative review of developments across infrastructure sectors

Infrastructure systems are particularly vulnerable to climate hazards, such as flooding, wildfires, cyclones and temperature fluctuations. Responding to these threats in a proportionate and targeted way requires quantitative analysis of climate risks, which underpins infrastructure resilience and adaptation strategies. The aim of this paper is to review the recent developments in quantitative climate risk analysis for key infrastructure sectors, including water and wastewater, telecommunications, health and education, transport (seaports, airports, road, rail and inland waterways), and energy (generation, transmission and distribution). We identify several overarching research gaps, which include the (i) limited consideration of multi-hazard and multi-infrastructure interactions within a single modelling framework, (ii) scarcity of studies focusing on certain combinations of climate hazards and infrastructure types, (iii) difficulties in scaling-up climate risk analysis across geographies, (iv) increasing challenge of validating models, (v) untapped potential of further knowledge spillovers across sectors, (vi) need to embed equity considerations into modelling frameworks, and (vii) quantifying a wider set of impact metrics. We argue that a cross-sectoral systems approach enables knowledge sharing and a better integration of infrastructure interdependencies between multiple sectors

Data for: The Distributional and Multi-Sectoral Impacts of Rainfall Shocks: Evidence from Computable General Equilibrium Modelling for the Awash basin, Ethiopia

Awash river basin crop production panel data.THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV

Avoiding the water-poverty trap: insights from a conceptual human-water dynamical model for coastal Bangladesh

Water-related risks impact development opportunities and can trap communities in a downward spiral of economic decline. In this article, the dynamic relationship between water-related risks and economic outcomes for an embanked area in coastal Bangladesh is conceptualized. The interaction between flood events, salinity, deteriorating and poorly maintained water infrastructure, agricultural production and income is modelled. The model is used to test the effect of improvements in the reliability, operation and maintenance of the water infrastructure on agricultural incomes and assets. Results indicate that interventions can have non-marginal impacts on indicators of welfare, switching the system dynamic from a poverty trap into one of growth

Numerical rivers: A synthetic streamflow generator for water resources vulnerability assessments

The vulnerability of water supplies to shortage depends on the complex interplay between streamflow variability and the management and demands of the water system. Assessments of water supply vulnerability to potential changes in streamflow require methods capable of generating a wide range of possible streamflow sequences. This paper presents a method to generate synthetic monthly streamflow sequences that reproduce the statistics of the historical record and that can express climate‐induced changes in user‐specified streamflow characteristics. The streamflow sequences are numerically simulated through random sampling from a parametric or a nonparametric distribution fitted to the historical data while shuffling the values in the time series until a sequence matching a set of desired temporal properties is generated. The desired properties are specified in an objective function which is optimized using simulated annealing. The properties in the objective function can be manipulated to generate streamflow sequences that exhibit climate‐induced changes in streamflow characteristics such as interannual variability or persistence. The method is applied to monthly streamflow data from the Thames River at Kingston (UK) to generate sequences that reproduce historical streamflow statistics at the monthly and annual time scales and to generate perturbed synthetic sequences expressing changes in short‐term persistence and interannual variability