Any sinkhole occurring in a highly active city provokes chaos and disturbance. In the city of Quito a big sinkhole appeared in a critical road interchange called El Trébol. For a few months the city came close to collapse with its traffic in this zone and a state of emergency was declared. During the recovery and reconstruction of the site, the cause was able to be determined as the combined negligence of monitoring of older subterranean infrastructure as well as high precipitation.

This study shows the capability of the numerical model in reproducing the trophic index (TRIX) calculated from in situ data. The ecosystem simulations can represent an important support for monitoring activities, allowing the use of TRIX to be extended to larger areas where in situ sampling activities are difficult to implement. The model TRIX was calculated for the whole Adriatic Sea, showing trophic differences across the Adriatic Sea.

Floods are amongst the most dangerous natural disasters. After the 2013 flood event in Val d’Aran (Pyrenees), fieldwork and the analysis of historical aerial photographs allowed us to study flood hazard by considering a broad range of processes and timescales. Results show that the long-term entrenchment tendency resulting from the geologic setting determines the short-term flood effects. Improved data arising from these kinds of studies can help decision makers for better flood risk management.

The present work describes an operational strategy for the development of a multiscale modeling system, based on a multiple–nesting approach and open–source numerical models. The strategy was applied and validated for the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy, scaling large–scale oceanographic model results to high–resolution coupled-wave 3-D hydrodynamics simulations for the area of Mar Grande in Taranto. The spatial and temporal high-resolution simulations were performed using the open source.

We provide the results of the joint analysis of the main climate variables and spatiotemporal distribution of 41 rockfalls that occurred in the Italian Alps between 1997 and 2013 in the absence of an evident trigger. We compared the meteorological conditions preceding the failures with the historical datasets, to determine if rockfall initiation was associated with some climatic anomaly. We found out that temperature anomalies were associated with rockfall occurrence in 83 % of our case studies.

Underground coal mining induces surface movement with damage to infrastructure. The best known phenomenon is downward movement or subsidence during the life of the mine. However, it has been observed that after the closure of the mine there is first a period of still residual subsidence, followed by upwards movement or uplift. This uplift is the direct result of the flooding of the underground workings. By conducting this research, the long-term impact of mining is better quantified.

The Sendai Framework for DRR declared that resilience is obtained through disaster prevention and risk reduction, with priority actions being risk assessment and early warning systems (EWSs). A universal standard for landslide EWSs was composed by considering the limitations of local communities, to provide guidance in conducting landslide detection, prediction, interpretation, and response. This paper details its application in Central Java, one of 20 landslide-prone provinces in Indonesia.

The study of active faults is relevant to estimate the seismic hazard of the surrounding area and relies on different methods. In the last decade interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques have proved to be robust tools to investigate the surface deformation caused by earthquakes. We used the multi-temporal ALOS L-band InSAR data to produce interferograms spanning times before and after the 2009 earthquake (M_w  = 6.0) in the Racha region (Georgia).

This paper evaluates decentralization of disaster risk reduction in Indonesia, chosen for its recent actions to decentralize governance of DRR coupled with a high level of disaster risk.

An analytical framework was developed to evaluate decentralized disaster risk reduction. A desk study, interviews and a gap analysis were used. Key barriers to implementation in Indonesia included capacity gaps at lower institutional levels, low compliance with legislation and inadequate resourcing.

The eruption in June 2011 of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (Chile) impacted air traffic around the Southern Hemisphere for several months. The ash deposited in vast areas of the Patagonian steppe was subjected to the strong wind conditions prevalent during the austral winter and spring. An ash resuspension event impacted Buenos Aires and resulted in the closure of airports in the area on 16 October 2011. Measurements of aerosol properties clearly indicate the enhanced concentrations

This study provides some new insights into earthquake forecasting models that are applied to regions with subduction systems, including the depth component for forecasting grids and time-dependent factors. These insights into the applications of forecasting models could provide key information regarding seismic and tsunami hazard assessments.