The author examines natural disasters around the Pacific Rim throughout history together with scientific data context to produce enlightening-and highly readable-entries. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off Japan's coast, triggering a powerful tsunami. The massive destruction that resulted proved that not even sophisticated, industrialized nations are immune from nature's fury. Written to take some of the mystery out of the earth's behavior, this encyclopedia chronicles major natural disasters that have occurred around the Pacific Rim, an area nicknamed the "Ring of Fire" because of the volatile earth that lies above and below. The encyclopedia offers descriptions of deadly earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis through time. The entries provide in-depth information that promotes an understanding of the structure of the earth and earth processes and shares the insights of scientists whose work helps clarify the causes and effects of these cataclysmic events. At the same time, the work examines how the people and cultures of the Pacific Rim view this active part of the earth, how they live with the threat of disaster, and how they have been affected by major events that have occurred. Readers will come away with a holistic view of what is known, how this knowledge was gained, and what its implications may be. Features approximately 100 alphabetically arranged entries with insights into specific disasters, technology, key geographic features of the area, significant people, cultural beliefs, and more Includes a general introduction and overview of the geography and tectonic activity in the Pacific Rim countries Offers both historical and scientific information Explains complex natural phenomena and scientific concepts using nontechnical language and clear illustrations Provides relevant cross-references to related topics as well as to articles, books, and websites that offer further information

The book, after two introductory chapters on seismic design principles and structural seismic analysis methods, proceeds with the detailed description of seismic design methods for steel building structures. These methods include all the well-known methods, like force-based or displacement-based methods, plus some other methods developed by the present authors or other authors that have reached a level of maturity and are applicable to a large class of steel building structures. For every method, detailed practical examples and supporting references are provided in order to illustrate the methods and demonstrate their merits. As a unique feature, the present book describes not just one, as it is the case with existing books on seismic design of steel structures, but various seismic design methods including application examples worked in detail. The book is a valuable source of information, not only for MS and PhD students, but also for researchers and practicing engineers engaged with the design of steel building structures.

This book is of paramount importance in the fields of engineering and applied sciences, given that through the values obtained by these procedures, many structures, like spillways of dams and highway culverts, are designed and constructed. The main aim of this book is to provide procedures for implementing many probability distribution functions, all of them based on using a standard and a common computational application known as Excel, which is available to any personal computer user. The computer procedures are given in enough detail, so readers can develop their own Excel worksheets. All the probability distribution functions in the book have schemes to estimate its parameters, quantiles, and confidence limits through the methods of moments and maximum likelihood.

This book focuses on the mechanical properties and permeability of coal, and the gas flow in coal seams. Based on coal permeability models, it establishes different models for coal seam gas, from the linear flow model to the gas-solid coupling flow model. It also provides the theoretical basis for the exploitation and safe production of coal as well as coal seam gas resources. As such, it is a valuable reference for researchers, advanced students and practitioners working in mining engineering and coalbed methane engineering.

Stress tests highlight a system's weak spots. This second edition provides a stress testing of the United States by exploring in detail the background to the disasters of the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis, the Gulf oil spill and the COVID-19 epidemic. These major stresses-the country's longest war, its biggest natural disaster, its biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, its biggest oil spill and its worst pandemic since the influenza pandemic of 1918-tell us much about structural flaws in the United States. This book explores each of these events in detail to locate the seed of the disasters, and highlights what we have learned and not learned from these stress tests.

Every year, droughts, floods, and fires impact hundreds of millions of people and cause massive economic losses. Climate change is making these catastrophes more dangerous. Now. Not in the future: NOW. This book describes how and why climate change is already fomenting dire consequences, and will certainly make climate disasters worse in the near future. Chris C. Funk combines the latest science with compelling stories, providing a timely, accessible, and beautifully-written synopsis of this critical topic. The book describes our unique and fragile Earth system, and the negative impacts humans are having on our support systems. It then examines recent disasters, including heat waves, extreme precipitation, hurricanes, fires, El Ninos and La Ninas, and their human consequences. By clearly describing the dangerous impacts that are already occurring, Funk provides a clarion call for social change, yet also conveys the beauty and wonder of our planet, and hope for our collective future.

There is evidence that the world has been witnessing more intense tropical cyclones. Accompanying these tropical cyclones are heightened levels of devastation that witness the loss of human life and wildlife, destruction of natural resources and property and the disruption of major economic and social activities. To this end, there is a growing demand for publications focusing on tropical cyclones at various levels that include regional, national and local levels, especially from Africa. One sub-region that has been witnessing the harsh realities of the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones in southern Africa. However, within this region, countries are usually impacted at varying degrees of damage. Among the countries that usually encounter the harshness of these tropical cyclones are the Comoros, Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Reunion, the Seychelles, South Africa and Zimbabwe. From the history books, the following tropical cyclones made landfall and hit southern Africa: Eline (2000), Favio (2007), Dineo (2017), Idai (2019), Kenneth (2019), Eliose (2021), and Chalane (2020). Although all these tropical cyclones had negative impacts, it is undoubtedly Tropical Cyclone Idai that shocked the world with its devastation mainly in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in March 2019. Key infrastructure was destroyed, livelihoods were lost, and the environment was degraded. Thousands of people died, many more were injured, many remain unaccounted for and others remained homeless as of the time of finalising this book in February 2021. This book, therefore focuses on the devastating impacts of Tropical Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe. The book interfaces Tropical Cyclone Idai's impacts with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This linkage was deliberate given that there is still time remaining until 2030, and the world has generally agreed to move into the future along the pathways of sustainable development and sustainability. The book adds to the first comprehensive profiling of the impacts of tropical cyclones on southern African economies, particularly that of Zimbabwe. It also comes up as the first in a three-volume series. The other volumes to look out for are Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol 2: Foundational and Fundamental Topics; and Cyclones in Southern Africa Vol 3: Implications for the Sustainable Development Goals. To this end, this book is suitable as a read for several professionals and disciplines such as tourism and hospitality studies, economics, sustainable development, development studies, environmental sciences, arts, geography, life sciences, politics, planning and public health.

This book recognizes Mexico's effects and challenges in a natural disaster and offers empirical risk-reduction methods in critical cases. The proposals considered here include real and detailed analysis, a set of models, frameworks, strategies, and findings in the three stages of the disaster (before-during-after). This book: describes the methodology to find secure locations for the Regional Humanitarian Response Depot; offers recommendations for the sites and creation of an Export Logistics Cluster; shows how to use available technology and information to locate volunteers in the right spots describes mathematical models to help to allocate procedure of resources for restoring the affected community and proposes actions to create resilience in the country's main economic sectors, including agriculture and industry. The processes applied at recent disasters such as the 19S earthquake and their results are used as case studies, identifying possibilities for further improvement. The book also describes new trends for Mexico due to climate change and makes suggestions for mitigating future disasters. The proposals are also replicable to other highly populated societies with similar socio-economic structures. Finally, this book is the basis for generating more innovative recommendations by researchers, graduate students, academics, professionals, and practitioners to obtain better planning and better collaboration between all the humanitarian chain actors. This book intends to be of interest as a fundamental tool for decision-makers, governments, non-governmental organizations, and enterprises.

This volume encompasses latest research presented on the 6th edition of the Disaster Management Conference. The research published in this book is contributed by academics and experts on public health, security and disaster management in order to assess the potential risk from various disasters and discuss ways to prevent or alleviate damage. As the human population has continued to concentrate in urban areas the number of people and the value of property affected by both natural and man-produced disasters has also grown. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes and forest fires have all taken their toll, as have man-made catastrophes such as industrial spillages and terrorist attacks. It is important to understand the nature of these global risks to be able to develop strategies to prepare for these events and plan effective responses in terms of disaster management and the associated human health impacts. The included paper cover various subject areas, including: Disaster analysis; Disaster monitoring and mitigation; Emergency preparedness; Risk mitigation; Risk and security; Resilience; Socio-economic issues; Health risk; Human factors; Multi-hazard risk assessment; Case studies; Learning from disasters and man-made disasters.

This contributed volume discusses essential topics and the fundamentals for Big Data Emergency Management and primarily focusses on the application of Big Data for Emergency Management. It walks the reader through the state of the art, in different facets of the big disaster data field. This includes many elements that are important for these technologies to have real-world impact. This book brings together different computational techniques from: machine learning, communication network analysis, natural language processing, knowledge graphs, data mining, and information visualization, aiming at methods that are typically used for processing big emergency data. This book also provides authoritative insights and highlights valuable lessons by distinguished authors, who are leaders in this field. Emergencies are severe, large-scale, non-routine events that disrupt the normal functioning of a community or a society, causing widespread and overwhelming losses and impacts. Emergency Management is the process of planning and taking actions to minimize the social and physical impact of emergencies and reduces the community's vulnerability to the consequences of emergencies. Information exchange before, during and after the disaster periods can greatly reduce the losses caused by the emergency. This allows people to make better use of the available resources, such as relief materials and medical supplies. It also provides a channel through which reports on casualties and losses in each affected area, can be delivered expeditiously. Big Data-Driven Emergency Management refers to applying advanced data collection and analysis technologies to achieve more effective and responsive decision-making during emergencies. Researchers, engineers and computer scientists working in Big Data Emergency Management, who need to deal with large and complex sets of data will want to purchase this book. Advanced-level students interested in data-driven emergency/crisis/disaster management will also want to purchase this book as a study guide.

This book is a joint endeavour of the three partner universities to develop a book with in-depth and state-of-art analysis for the academic community of East Asia and the world. Past disasters, like the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake in China and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, saw good efforts of East Asian countries in helping each other. Such a trend has been further strengthened in these countries' recent cooperation and mutual support in their fight against Covid-19 pandemic. While China, Japan, and South Korea are geographically and culturally contiguous and hence may share some characteristics in their risk management principles and practices, there may also be many significant differences due to their different socioeconomic and political systems. The commonalities and variances in East Asia risk management systems are also reflected by their recent responses to the Covid-19 challenges. While all three countries demonstrated overall success in controlling the epidemic, the measures taken by them were different. This research will be of interest to policymakers, scholars and economists.

This book analyzes recent advances, trends, challenges and potentials of the role of media in disaster risk reduction. Collaboration, co-design and co-delivery with other stakeholders in science technology, private sectors, and civil society are found to be effective in reaching people and communities.The media is considered to be of utmost importance in all phases of disasters, before, during and after, with different types of media having different proactive roles to play in disaster risk reduction. Before disasters, they play essential roles not only in bringing early warning to people but also in enhancing their perception of the need to take action. At during- and post-disaster response recovery phases, community radio and social media are the key. These necessitate a resilient media infrastructure as the core of uninterrupted coverage. Media literacy has become an important issue for several stakeholders, including governments. In addition, more focus is placed on media governance to look at the priorities of disaster risk reduction initiatives within the media. All of these are considered to lead to trust in the media, which further improves people's disaster response actions based on information from the media, before and during disasters. Covering different aspects of media, this book is a valuable source for students, researchers, academics, policy-makers and development practitioners.

This book evaluates the seismic performance of concrete gravity dams, considering the effects of strong motion duration, mainshock-aftershock seismic sequence, and near-fault ground motion. It employs both the extended finite element method (XFEM) and concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) models to characterize the mechanical behavior of concrete gravity dams under strong ground motions, including the dam-reservoir-foundation interaction. In addition, it discusses the effects of the initial crack, earthquake direction, and cross-stream seismic excitation on the nonlinear dynamic response to strong ground motions, and on the damage-cracking risk of concrete gravity dams. This book provides a theoretical basis for the seismic performance evaluation of high dams, and can also be used as a reference resource for researchers and graduate students engaged in the seismic design of high dams.

Flooding claims many lives worldwide each year. In addition, many more lives are affected by homelessness, disease and crop failures as a result of floods' destructiveness. The number of recent flood events coupled with climate change predictions and urban development, suggest that these statistics are likely to worsen in the future. Flooding in populated areas can cause substantial property damage as well as threaten human life. Apart from the obvious physical damage to buildings, contents and loss of life, there other more indirect losses that are often overlooked. These intangible impacts are generally associated with disruption to normal life as well as longer term health issues, including stress-related illness. The conference papers cover the following topics: Flood Risk Management; Flood Risk Vulnerability; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Flood Forecasting; Flood Case Studies; Responses to Reduce Vulnerability to Flooding.