Extended periods of extreme cold weather can cause severe disruptions in human societies, in terms of human health, agriculture, infrastructure, and other factors. A novel statistical model is developed in order to model these extreme cold episodes under different climate conditions. According to the model, the occurrence of extreme cold events has decreased approximately 2 times during the course of the 20th century as a result of anthropogenic climate change.

First applications of the ANYCaRE experiment revealed that multi-model impact-based outputs help forecasters and civil protection to shape a holistic view of the situation and enhance their confidence in specific emergency activities. This interdisciplinary work is conducted in the frame of the ANYWHERE European project, which aims to provide institutions across Europe with a decision-support tool to better anticipate and respond to extreme weather and climate events.

There is a long history of researching earthquake prediction, but weaknesses in traditional approaches to seismic hazards have become more and more evident. Remote sensing was used with earth observation technology, which is a new method that can instantly acquire a large area of abnormal information caused by earthquakes. In this paper, a popular method was tested in Sichuan but it did not perform well in earthquake predictions of this area. The causes have also been studied.

To assess the impacts of the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (ER-SNWDP) of China on water-receiving areas' floods and waterlogging, a coupled 1-D/2-D hydrodynamic model is built, taking the Nansi Lake basin as an example. Some impacts, especially for emergency operations, were analysed, and selected implications are presented for the integrated management of large-scale interbasin water diversions.

Research has been done to assess the performance of relative positioning over long baseline lengths in determining the accuracy of site velocities from GPS campaign measurements. GPS campaign measurements were generated from the IGS data, and the results were compared with PPP-derived findings. A major outcome of this study is that relative positioning over long baseline lengths produces similar accuracies to PPP. A newly proposed refinement method also improves the available PPP accuracy.

Oceanic rogue waves are unexpectedly large displacements from a tranquil background and pose dangers to shipping and offshore structures. A formulation of such abrupt, transient motions in the interior of the oceans is proposed. For constant buoyancy frequency, such internal rogue waves can occur in shallow fluids of various internal mode numbers, which is in strong contrast with surface rogue waves. Internal waves are crucial in oceanography as they affect transport of heat, mass and energy.

The fallout of large clasts (> 5 cm) from the margins of eruptive plumes can damage local infrastructure and severely injure people close to the volcano. Even though this potential hazard has been observed at many volcanoes, it has often been overlooked. We present the first hazard and risk assessment of large-clast fallout from eruptive plumes and use Mt Etna (Italy) as a case study. The use of dedicated shelters in the case of an explosive event that occurs with no warning is also evaluated.

We mapped – for the first time – the probability of occurrence of drought over Spain, with the overriding aim of improving current drought assessment, management and mitigation measures, and strategies across the region. Spatially, our estimations suggest a higher probability of extreme drought events in southern and central areas of Spain compared to northern and eastern regions. Nevertheless, there are strong differences among drought indices and drought timescales.

We want to know which areas are prone to landslides and where pipelines are more unsafe. Through a model, we determined that 33.18 % and 40.46 % of the slopes in the study are were in high-hazard and extremely high-hazard areas, respectively. The number and length of pipe segments in the highly vulnerable and extremely vulnerable areas accounted for about 12 % of the total. In general, the pipeline risk within Qingchuan and Jian'ge counties was relatively high.

This article discusses how Nepal's development, landslide risk and geopolitics are intertwined as the country seeks to expand its road networks. However, rural villages adjacent to major roads have developed their own network of poorly constructed rural roads, which are likely to increase environmental and socioeconomic risks associated with roadside landslides. We base our observations on research conducted over a decade in Nepal, with reference to new research on roads and landslides.

Flood risk management relies on assessments performed using flood loss models of different complexities. We compared the performances of expert-based and empirical damage models on three major flood events in northern Italy. Our findings suggest that multivariate models have better potential to provide reliable damage estimates if extensive ancillary characterisation data are available. Expert-based approaches are better suited for transferability compared to empirically based approaches.

La Paz, Bolivia, experiences frequent damaging landslides. We quantify creep before and after the city’s largest modern landslide using spaceborne InSAR. Creep of ancient landslide deposits increased in rate and extent following failure and extended into adjacent intact materials. Accelerated steady-state creep reflects complex post-failure stress redistribution. Landslide risk in La Paz, which is underlain by many large ancient landslides, may be even greater than previously thought.

Livestock and their owners in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau has long suffered from snow disaster. In order to help the local herder community better prepare for potential loss, we developed a probabilistic disaster-event simulation approach, from which livestock loss induced by a snow disaster with specific intensity and local prevention capacity could be predicted. By using this method, we managed to estimate snow disaster duration, livestock loss rate, and number at different return periods.

A mega-flood in 1998 caused tremendous losses in China and triggered major policy adjustments in flood-risk management. This paper rethinks these policy adjustments and discusses how China should adapt to newly emerging flood challenges. We suggest that China needs novel flood-risk management approaches to address the new challenges from rapid urbanization and climate change. These include risk-based urban planning and a coordinated water governance system.