Thunderstorms are difficult phenomena to measure systematically, as they occur randomly in space and time, have short duration and limited size. Recently, a large anemometric network for thunderstorm outflow monitoring and cataloguing has been created in the northern Mediterranean. This paper analyses about 200 events to study their seasonality, advection, duration, and intensity. The link between wind speed records, meteorological events, and weather scenarios is investigated.

Debris flows, following wildfires, constitute a significant threat to downstream populations and infrastructure. Therefore, developing measures to reduce the vulnerability of local communities to debris flows is of paramount importance. This work proposes a new model for predicting post-fire debris flow occurrence on a regional scale and demonstrates that the proposed model has notably higher skill than the currently used approaches.

A methodological framework for the multi-hazard (earthquake and flood) failure analysis of fluvial dikes due to liquefaction is presented. Failure probability of the earthen structures is presented in the form of a fragility surface as a function of both seismic and hydraulic load. It is emphasized that the potential interactions between the two hazards should not be ignored in risk analyses and decision-making.

We use a multi-disciplinary dataset to show that the Prà di Lama sinkhole was created through several episodic events of unrest. We suggest that fluid circulation along an active fault zone, accompanied by localized seismic creep, control the growth of the Prà di Lama deep-sited sinkhole. Conversely, a connection between events of unrest and the largest earthquakes in northern Tuscany is not identified. This paper provides new insights into the evolution of sinkholes in active fault zones.

Natural instability processes are very common. Almost every year, landslides, mud flows and debris flows in the Alpine and Apennine areas and flooding in the Po flood plain cause severe damage to structures and infrastructure and often claim human lives. Geology researchers collect thousands of rain data and process them to try the most precise prediction about the triggering of superficial landslides in order to mitigate the risk and safeguard human goods and lives.

This work presents deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard assessments for Peninsular Malaysia by considering far-field (> 400 km) Sumatran and local intraplate earthquake sources (2004–2016 from 19 stations). Our results predict the central-western peninsula experiencing higher ground motions due to events from Sumatran sources. Our predicted acceleration values are well within the allowable design limits as per the Annex drafted in 2016 by the Department of Standards Malaysia.

Insurance is suggested to be an important mechanism to boost flood risk reduction, especially at an individual level. This study shows how insurers in developed countries are engaged in flood risk reduction and under which conditions (insurance scheme, market penetration). Insurers in public insurance schemes seem to be more proactive when it comes to flood risk reduction. Surprisingly, risk-based pricing is seldom practiced, even though it is heavily argued for in the academic literature.

We investigate the role of building value estimation schemes within flood exposure analyses on regional to national scales. Our results for Switzerland suggest that models based on individual buildings produce more reliable results than models based on surface area, but only if they consider the buildings' volume. Simple models tend to underestimate the exposure, which results in suboptimal allocation of resources for protection measures in decision making processes based on cost efficiency.

While producing a landslide susceptibility map using a fieldwork-based landslide inventory and a logistic regression model, two crucial questions came to our minds. (i) Shall we consider unsurveyed regions of the study area, for which landslide absence is typically assumed? (ii) Which reference mapping unit should be used in our model? So we compared four maps and found that rejecting unsurveyed regions together with slope units as reference mapping unit should be the best option.

Climate change can affect the safety of water infrastructures such as dams. However, related information is vast and scattered, and the assessment of these impacts remains complex. This article seeks a multidisciplinary review of the potential impacts of climate change in every component of dam safety. This will provide useful information for dam owners and dam safety practitioners in their decision-making process.

This article presents the comparison of two numerical models that model tsunami inundation that incorporates the built environment of coastal communities. It was found that the 2-D model did not accurately capture the important details of the flow near initial impact due to the transiency and large vertical variation of the flow. The 3-D model was able to capture transient characteristic of the flow, but at a much higher computational cost.

Our study builds a 2-D model at an urbanized watershed, and the results indicate that permeable pavement and green roofs are good strategies for urban inundation mitigation. What is more, we also find the best combination of permeable pavement and green roofs for local areas, considering both effectiveness and cost. This study enriches the inundation mitigation research on an urban watershed scale and provides some references to urban storm water management and inundation mitigation.

The Norwegian Avalanche Warning Service was launched in 2013 to stop the increase in avalanche fatalities. We studied how efficiently warnings communicate the hazard on Varsom.no: which risk factors are difficult to assess and manage? Which elements in the warning are (not) important? Which elements are easily misunderstood? Which information/features are missing/ignored by users? We developed a communication effectiveness score for testing this using an online survey.

Tsunamis like those in Indonesia in 2004 and Japan in 2011 have shown like never before the destructive power of this natural disaster. This highlighted the importance of fast and accurate simulations for forecasting. We present a fully GPU-accelerated tsunami model for large domains that delivers results within minutes with high accuracy and efficient resource use. By using just three GPUs, results for the Indian Ocean were obtained in 15 min. This allows for fast evacuation and risk decisions.

Tropical cyclone (TC) Debbie crossed the northeastern coast of Australia on 27 March 2017. A multi-sector consortium collected data throughout the event to produce a holistic picture of hazards and impacts at the coast. While water levels and waves were unprecedented for this area since monitoring began, TC Debbie can be regarded as a near miss in terms of widespread coastal flooding. This work provides a case study of cross-sector data sharing in a natural hazard context in Australia.