On the 23rd of June, I participated in the Second Workshop for AI (Artificial Intelligence) for Natural Disaster Management that hosted around 400 scientists, UN advisors, practitioners and policymakers from all over the world interested in machine learning for supporting disaster prediction and early warning. AI is not my research area; however, I have always been interested in the new advances t ...[Read More]
In summer 2020, extreme rainfall events dumped up to 320 mm of rain in a single day in the Baixada Santista metropolitan region, São Paulo state, breaking Brazil’s record for the biggest rainfall in a single event and demonstrating one of the greatest threats of climate change. The damage caused by the associated landslides led to dozens of fatalities and hundreds of homeless people, as well ...[Read More]
Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it! Just a few words radioed by volcanologist David ‘Dave’ Johnston on May 18, 1980, to USGS headquarter in Vancouver, Washington State. It was 8:32 a.m., and a few hours later he lost his life during the (in)famous Mount Saint Helens eruption. That day, exactly forty years ago, the eruption of Mount St. Helen upset the world. It all started with a collapse on the nor ...[Read More]
Soil moisture and rainfall are the two fundamental variables in the water and energy cycle and their knowledge in many applications is crucial. For instance, for predicting the occurrence and the magnitude of flood and landslide events the knowledge of the initial soil moisture condition and of rainfall amount is mandatory. In the last decade, some authors have proposed a completely new approach, ...[Read More]
