In this article, we present an automatic processing chain aimed to support the detection of landslides that induce sharp land cover changes. The chain exploits free software and spaceborne SAR data, allowing the systematic monitoring of wide mountainous regions exposed to mass movements. In the test site, we verified a general accordance between the spatial distribution of seismically induced landslides and the detected land cover changes, demonstrating its potential use in emergency management.

We investigate sources of uncertainty in coastal flood risk assessment in São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island developing state. We find that, for the present-day scenario, uncertainty from depth damage functions and digital elevation models can be more significant than that related to the estimation of significant wave height or storm surge level. For future scenarios (year 2100), sea level rise prediction becomes the input with the strongest impact on coastal flood damage estimate.

The geometry of estuaries is often altered through dredging to make room for ships and with extensive landfill over wetlands to enable development. Here, we use historical maps to help create computational models of seawater flow around and into a lagoonal bay of New York City for the 1880s and 2010s. Our results show that these past man-made changes cause higher coastal storm tides and that they result specifically from deeper depths, expanded inlet width, and landfill.

Although disaster experience does indeed play an important role in helping people become aware of earthquake risk, disaster experience does not necessarily increase people’s willingness to retrofit their houses. People with higher education and certain occupations represent those who might have more available resources, and therefore they might become more willing to prepare for and respond to disasters.

This study establishes an indicator system for social vulnerability evaluation of storm surges for coastal cities. The indicator system is applied to Shenzhen, China, and socioeconomic impacts are discovered in the results. Exposure, sensitivity, and resilience all show an increasing trend from 1986 to 2016, as resilience accounts for the largest increase and is connected to a decreasing social vulnerability trend.

This review article outlines the state of thunderstorm climatologies, which are underrepresented in the literature. Thunderstorms overlap with lightning and intense precipitation events, both of which create important hazards. This article compiles and evaluates information on datasets, research approaches and methodologies used in quantifying thunderstorm distribution, providing an introduction to the topic and signposting new and established researchers to research articles and datasets.

We considered the Western Mediterranean Oscillation index (WeMOi) to analyse the occurrence of extreme torrential episodes (≥ 200 mm in 24 h) over Catalonia (NE Iberia) during the 1951–2016 period. Principal results reveal the occurrence of 50 episodes, mainly in autumn, especially during the second 10 d period of October (11–20), coinciding with the most negative WeMOi values of the year. Seasonal changes in these episodes and in WeMOi values might be due to sea warming.

The flood damage database HOWAS 21 contains object-specific flood damage data resulting from fluvial, pluvial and groundwater flooding. The datasets incorporate various variables of flood hazard, exposure, vulnerability and direct tangible damage at properties from several economic sectors. This paper presents HOWAS 21 and highlights exemplary analyses to demonstrate the use of HOWAS 21 flood damage data.

To date, the effects of tsunamis have been mainly reported from tropical and temperate climatic zones. Rare records of polar tsunamis may partly reflect the very low population densities, the short written history, and little coastal geological work focused on the sedimentary record of palaeotsunamis. We report the results of the field survey of post-tsunami damage in the Nuugaatsiaq settlement in Greenland, which on 17 June 2017 was hit by three tsunami waves triggered by a landslide.

Meteotsunamis are long waves created by atmospheric disturbances travelling over the sea. These waves can be hazardous in rare cases. Their occurrence in the Baltic Sea has been poorly known, which is why we examine century-long sea level records from the Gulf of Finland to identify these waves. In total, 121 potential meteotsunamis were found. The strong connection between meteotsunami occurrence and lightning observations indicates that meteotsunamis in this region occur during thunderstorms.

Previous studies have focused on generalized vulnerability assessment from landslides or other types of slope failures, such as debris flow and rockfall. The proposed study establishes a three-step approach to investigate the physical vulnerability of buildings affected by slow-moving landslides. Herein, good consistency between the estimated building physical vulnerability and in-field damage evidence was found.