Natural Hazards

Define and assess drought, the herculean challenge!

Joana Parente November 29, 2021

The drying out of the soil in the wadis of the Dead Sea Valley. Credit: Stefan Schmitt (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The frequency and intensity of drought periods have increased since the 1950s over most land areas [1]. In fact, between 1998 and 2017, drought was the sixth natural hazard associated with disasters (4.8% of the total number of disasters) but the second in terms of the total number of affected people (33% of the total number of affected people), causing more than 21,000 deaths [2]. For example, in ...[Read More]

Natural Hazards 101: Forecasting and modelling

Gabriele Amato September 6, 2021

Photo credit, from top left to bottom right: Pamela Trisolino (via Imaggeo), Michiel Baatsen (via Imaggeo), Stefan Doerr (via Imaggeo), Dimitri Defrance (via Imaggeo), Katja Bigge (via Imaggeo), Babak Hejrani (via Imaggeo), Elias Sch (via Pixabay) and Dan Killam (via Imaggeo).

With the Natural Hazards 101 series, we mean to bring our readers closer to the terminology often used in the field of natural hazards, but that may not be so familiar. In the first episode of the series, we focused on the definition of hazard and natural hazard. We moved then to the concept of risk, which brought us to define exposure and vulnerability. Later on, we digested the disaster terminol ...[Read More]

LANDAWARE: the international network on landslide early warning systems

Gabriele Amato May 17, 2021

For today’s interview, it gives me great pleasure to host Dr Manfred Stähli, who will tell us about a new initiative in the field of Landslide Early Warning Systems (LEWS), which is attracting the attention and participation of researchers from many countries. This initiative is called LandAware. Manfred is a senior scientist in mountain hydrology, slope stability and early warning systems a ...[Read More]

Diagnosing drought in northeast Brazil

David W Walker and 3DDD research team May 3, 2021

A dam, an almost empty water reservoir and a small abandoned boat

Figure 1. An almost completely dry reservoir at Quixeramobim in the state of Ceará, northeast Brazil, during the 2012-2018 drought. Photo credit: Juliana Lima Oliveira (FUNCEME), with permission.

Worldwide, drought has put lives and livelihoods under serious threat. People are increasingly suffering from drought, but we often also aggravate drought ourselves. Fortunately, solutions to drought problems are mainly in our own hands as well. Drought is not just a water problem. It is a societal problem. Droughts: a local problem with global relevance In recent years, droughts seem to be ...[Read More]