Two drought hazard indices are presented that combine drought deficit and anomaly aspects: one for soil moisture drought (SMDAI) where we simplified the DSI and the other for streamflow drought (QDAI), which is to our knowledge the first ever deficit anomaly drought index including surface water demand. Both indices are tested at the global scale with WaterGAP 2.2d outputs, providing more differentiated spatial and temporal patterns distinguishing the actual degree of respective drought hazard.

We present an analysis of fatalities attributable to weather conditions in the Czech Republic during the 2000–2019 period based on our own database created from newspaper reports, on the database of the Czech Statistical Office, and on the database of the police of the Czech Republic as well as on their comparison. Despite some uncertainties, generally declining trends in the number of fatalities appear for the majority of weather variables. The structure of fatalities is described in detail.

This review synthesizes and complements existing knowledge in designing resilient vital infrastructure systems (VIS). Results from a systematic literature review indicate that (i) VIS are still being built without taking resilience explicitly into account and (ii) measures to enhance the resilience of VIS have not been widely applied in practice. The main pressing topic to address is the integration of the combined social, ecological, and technical resilience of these systems.

A cluster of 13 large mass flow events including five detachments of entire valley glaciers was observed in the Petra Pervogo range, Tajikistan, in 1973–2019. The local clustering provides additional understanding of the influence of temperature, seismic activity, and geology. Most events occurred in summer of years with mean annual air temperatures higher than the past 46-year trend. The glaciers rest on weak bedrock and are rather short, making them sensitive to friction loss due to meltwater.

In this paper, we study when social media is an adequate source to find metadata about incidents that cannot be acquired by traditional means. We identify six major use cases: impact assessment and verification of model predictions, narrative generation, recruiting citizen volunteers, supporting weakly institutionalized areas, narrowing surveillance areas, and reporting triggers for periodical surveillance.

Seismic design guidelines for building structures present simplified approaches to include relevant structural behavior that affects the structural response through design spectra modification factors. The objective of this study is to propose simplified mathematical expressions to modify the design spectra to consider the stiffness and strength-degrading behavior of structures. Additionally, these expressions are proposed to be included in the next version of the Mexico City Building Code.

This is a perspective based on personal experience on whether a large number of landslides caused by a single trigger (e.g. an earthquake, an intense rainfall, a rapid snowmelt event) or by multiple triggers in a period can be predicted, in space and time, considering the consequences of slope failures.

We used flow diagrams to represent the ways in which anthropogenic land use and natural hazards have affected rice production in the two mega-deltas of Vietnam. Anthropogenic developments meant to improve productivity may create negative feedbacks on rice production and quality. Natural hazards further amplify problems created by human activities. A systems-thinking approach can yield nuanced perspectives for tackling environmental challenges.

For many decades, natural disasters have been monitored by trained analysts using multiple satellite images to observe landscape change. This approach is incredibly useful, but our new tool, HazMapper, offers researchers and the scientifically curious public a web-accessible cloud-based tool to perform similar analysis. We intend for the tool to both be used in scientific research and provide rapid response to global natural disasters like landslides, wildfires, and volcanic eruptions.

The review of flood vulnerability indices revealed that (1) temporal dynamic aspects were often disregarded, (2) coping and adaptive capacity indicators were frequently ignored, as obtaining these data demand time and effort, and (3) most studies neither applied sensitivity (90.5 %) or uncertainty analyses (96.8 %) nor validated the results (86.3 %). The study highlights the importance of addressing these gaps to produce scientifically rigorous and comparable research.

In 2018 Typhoon Mangkhut triggered thousands of landslides in the Itogon region (Philippines). An inventory of 1101 landslides revealed that landslides mostly occurred in slopes covered by wooded grassland in clayey materials, predominantly facing E-SE. Satellite rainfall and soil moisture data associated with Typhoon Mangkhut and the previous months in 2018 were analyzed. Results showed that landslides occurred during high-intensity rainfall that coincided with the highest soil moisture values.

The main objective of this study was to propose a new approach to integrating hazard maps to detect hazardous areas on a national scale, for which area-limited data are available. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used as a tool to combine the different hazard maps into an integrated hazard map. The results from integrated hazard maps can identify dangerous areas from both individual and integrated hazards.

The Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8 can continuously monitor high-impact weather events with high frequency in space and time. The assimilation of AHI radiance data was implemented with the three-dimensional variational data assimilation system of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model for the analysis and prediction of Typhoon Soudelor (2015) in the Pacific typhoon season.

An intense rainstorm hit the Middle East between 24 and 27 April 2018. The storm reached its peak over Israel on 26 April when a heavy flash flood took the lives of 10 people. The rainfall was comparable to the long-term annual rainfall in the southern Negev. The timing was the end of the rainy season when rain is rare and spotty. The study analyses the dynamic and thermodynamic conditions that made this rainstorm one of the latest spring severe events in the region during the last 3 decades.

We explored differences in the damaging process across different flood types, regions within Germany, and six flood events through a numerical model in which the groups can learn from each other. Differences were found mostly across flood types, indicating the importance of identifying them, but there is great overlap across regions and flood events, indicating either that socioeconomic or temporal information was not well represented or that they are in fact less different within our cases.

This study relies on topography to simulate the origin and displacement of potentially river-blocking landslides. It highlights a continuous range of simulated landslide dams that go unnoticed in the field due to their small scale. The computation results show that landslide-dammed lake volume can be estimated from upstream drainage area and landslide volume, thus enabling an efficient hazard assessment of possible landslide-dammed lake volume – and flooding magnitude in case of dam failure.

We present novel probability maps for the opening position of new vents in the San Salvador (El Salvador) and Nejapa-Chiltepe (Nicaragua) volcanic complexes. In particular, we present thematic maps, i.e., we consider different hazardous phenomena separately. To illustrate the significant effects of considering the expected eruption style in the construction of vent opening maps, we focus on the analysis of small-scale pyroclastic density currents using an approach based on numerical modeling.

A case study on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was conducted at the Phra Thong island, Thailand, using a deep neural network (DNN) inverse model. The model estimated tsunami characteristics from the deposits at Phra Thong island. The uncertainty quantification of the result was evaluated. The predicted flow conditions and the depositional characteristics were compared with the reported observed values. This DNN model can serve as an essential tool for tsunami hazard mitigation at coastal cities.

By analyzing the joint frequency of compound events (e.g., high temperatures and droughts), we show that the potential evapotranspiration and mean air temperature are becoming essential components for drought occurrence over Central Europe and the Mediterranean region. This, together with the projected increase in potential evapotranspiration under a warming climate, has significant implications concerning the future occurrence of drought events over these regions.