1,288 research outputs found
Intimate Partner Violence in Urban, Rural, and Remote Areas: An Investigation of Offense Severity and Risk Factors
This study compared the severity of intimate partner violence (IPV) and the relationship between risk factors for IPV and overall risk judgements of future IPV in urban, rural and remote areas. IPV risk assessments conducted by the Swedish police between 2010 and 2014 in urban (n = 564), rural (n = 456), and remote (n = 196) areas were examined. Rurality was associated with the severity of IPV reported, as well as the presence of risk factors and their relationship to overall risk judgements. Cases in remote areas included more severe IPV as well as more risk factors
Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance
Winter storms are the most costly natural hazard for European residential
property. We compare four distinct storm damage functions with respect to
their forecast accuracy and variability, with particular regard to the most
severe winter storms. The analysis focuses on daily loss estimates under
differing spatial aggregation, ranging from district to country level. We
discuss the broad and heavily skewed distribution of insured losses posing
difficulties for both the calibration and the evaluation of damage functions.
From theoretical considerations, we provide a synthesis between the
frequently discussed cubic windâdamage relationship and recent studies that
report much steeper damage functions for European winter storms. The
performance of the storm loss models is evaluated for two sources of wind
gust data, direct observations by the German Weather Service and ERA-Interim
reanalysis data. While the choice of gust data has little impact on the
evaluation of German storm loss, spatially resolved coefficients of variation
reveal dependence between model and data choice. The comparison shows that
the probabilistic models by Heneka et al. (2006) and Prahl et al.
(2012) both provide accurate loss predictions for moderate to extreme losses, with
generally small coefficients of variation. We favour the latter model in
terms of model applicability. Application of the versatile deterministic
model by Klawa and Ulbrich (2003) should be restricted to extreme loss, for which it
shows the least bias and errors comparable to the probabilistic model by
Prahl et al. (2012)
The Performance of Hillside Fills During the Northridge Earthquake
Many hillside fills located in the Santa Monica, Santa Susana, and San Gabriel Mountains were damaged during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. While no deaths have been attributed to fill movement, on the order of tens of millions of dollars in property damage was caused by fill movements which typically involved less than about 7.5cm (3 inches) of localized displacement. Some of the damage was induced by permanent deformations of underlying native materials, but most appears to have resulted from ground failure or ground shaking phenomena associated directly with the fill materials. These phenomena include cyclic compaction, lurching, and amplification of shaking within the fills. This paper presents a preliminary summary of the typical distress to fills caused by the Northridge Earthquake, and discusses the probable mechanisms of failure
- âŚ