Compound flooding is caused by multiple mechanisms contributing to elevated water level simultaneously, which poses higher risks than conventional floods. This study uses a holistic approach to simulate the processes on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales that contributed to the compound flooding during Hurricane Florence in 2018. Sensitivity tests are used to isolate the contribution from each mechanism and identify the region experiencing compound effects, thus supporting management.

We present research that attempts to address recent and future changes in hot and dry compound events in the Pyrenees, which can induce severe environmental hazards in this area. The results show that during the last few decades, these kinds of compound events have only increased due to temperature increase. However, for the future, it is expected that the risk associated with these compound events will be raised by both the thermal increase and the longer duration of drought periods.

We studied the effect of potential future climate change on floods, flood protection, and electricity infrastructure in the Conasauga River watershed in the US using ensemble hydrodynamic modeling. We used a GPU-accelerated Two-dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs (TRITON) hydrodynamic model to simulate floods. Overall, this study demonstrates how a fast hydrodynamic model can enhance flood frequency maps and vulnerability assessment under changing climatic conditions.

Storm surge flooding can challenge rescue and recovery operations, especially over large estuaries and populated barrier islands. Understanding the relationship between storm and tidal characteristics and surge timing is important for proper resourcing prior to an event. Here we compare the concurrency of maximum observed surge and areal extent of effective hazard operations for hurricanes Matthew and Florence in eastern North Carolina, USA. Matthew was a more spatially compounded surge event.

Rainfall thresholds are relations between rainfall intensity and duration on which the forecast of the possible occurrence of a debris flow can be based. To check the robustness of a physically based stony debris flow rainfall threshold, in this work we developed a procedure to estimate the effects of various sources of error on the determination of the threshold parameters. Results show that these effects are limited and therefore show the good robustness of the threshold estimate.

We developed a methodology that generates free externally disturbed magnetic variations in ground magnetometers close to the Chilean convergent margin. Spectral analysis (~ mHz) and magnetic anomalies increased prior to large Chilean earthquakes (Maule 2010, M_w 8.8; Iquique 2014, M_w 8.2; Illapel 2015, M_w 8.3). These findings relate to microcracks within the lithosphere due to stress state changes. This physical evidence should be thought of as a last stage of the earthquake preparation process.

This article assesses the thematic and composite social and health vulnerability of Bangladesh to floods. Tailored vulnerability, weighted by flood forecast and satellite inundation, can be used to predict the massive impacts of the August 2017 flood event. This approach has several advantages and practical implications, including the potential to promote targeted and coordinated disaster management and health practices.

Messages on social media can be an important source of information during crisis situations. This article reviews approaches for the reliable detection of informative messages in a flood of data. We demonstrate the varying goals of these approaches and present existing data sets. We then compare approaches based (1) on keyword and location filtering, (2) on crowdsourcing, and (3) on machine learning. We also point out challenges and suggest future research.

Risk ratio (RR), developed in this paper, stands out as a robust indicator for finding the relationship between residential construction and its associated landslide risk. It proved especially useful for municipalities on the Mediterranean coast, since it differentiates between those that take on a higher risk and those that do not. Our research establishes valuable criteria to find how suitable a specific local entity's risk management is and explore what causes the incidence of landslide risk.

Climate hazards may be caused by events which have multiple drivers. Here we present a method to break down climate model biases in hazard indicators down to the bias caused by each driving variable. Using simplified fire and heat stress indicators driven by temperature and relative humidity as examples, we show how multivariate indicators may have complex biases and that the relationship between driving variables is a source of bias that must be considered in climate model bias corrections.

Port industries are extremely vulnerable to coastal hazards such as tsunamis. Despite their pivotal role in local and global economies, there has been little attention paid to tsunami impacts on port industries. For the first time, tsunami damage data are being extensively collected for port structures and catalogued into a database. The study also provides fragility curves which describe the probability of damage exceedance for different port industries given different tsunami intensities.

Information about lightning properties is important in order to advance the current understanding of lightning, whereby the characteristics of ground strike points are in particular helpful to improving the risk estimation for lightning protection. High-speed video recordings of 1174 negative downward lightning flashes are taken in different regions around the world and analyzed in terms of flash multiplicity, duration, interstroke intervals and ground strike point properties.

The lightning flash density is a key input parameter for assessing the risk of occurrence of a lightning strike. Flashes tend to have more than one ground termination point on average; therefore the use of ground strike point densities is more appropriate. The aim of this study is to assess the ability of three distinct ground strike point algorithms to correctly determine the observed ground-truth strike points.

Risk assessment consists of three steps: identification, estimation and evaluation. Nevertheless, the risk management framework also includes a fourth step, the need for feedback on all the risk assessment undertakings. However, there is a lack of such feedback, which constitutes a serious deficiency in the reduction of environmental hazards at the present time. The objective of this review paper consists of addressing meteorological hazards and extremes within the risk management framework.

Floods may affect critical infrastructure which provides essential services to people. We analyse the impact of floods on road networks and water supply systems, and we investigate how cascade effects propagate if interdependencies among networks are not considered. The analysis shows that if preparedness plans include information on accessibility to key sections of water supply plants, less people suffer from water shortage in case of flood. The method is tested in the city of Florence (Italy).

On 26 January 1700 CE, a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the US Pacific Northwest west coast. The tsunami caused severe damage to coastal forests in Washington State. However, evidence of the impact on coastal Oregon trees has been difficult to find. We present some of the first evidence of tree-ring growth changes caused by the 1700 tsunami from an old-growth Douglas-fir stand located in South Beach, Oregon. We also present a tsunami inundation model of the 1700 earthquake.