This paper focuses on the use of community-based early warning systems for flood resilience in Nepal. The first part of the work outlines the evolution and current status of these community-based systems, highlighting the limited lead times currently available for early warning. The second part of the paper focuses on the development of a robust operational flood forecasting methodology for use by the Nepal Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) to enhance early warning lead times.

Tropical cyclones and sea level rise cause major problems including beach erosion and damage to infrastructure in coastal areas. Inexpensive but effective plans for coastal protection will be needed by small island nations and developing countries. Natural breakwater formed by reefs is more cost-effective in coastal protection than the construction of artificial defenses. It provides a habitat for marine organisms and societal benefits including marine products, tourism, and education.

The influx of millions of Syrian refugees into Turkey has rapidly changed the population distribution along the Dead Sea Rift and East Anatolian fault zones. In contrast to other countries in the Middle East where refugees are accommodated in camp environments, the majority of displaced individuals in Turkey are integrated into local cities, towns, and villages – placing stress on urban settings and increasing potential exposure to strong earthquake shaking. Yet, displaced populations are often unaccounted for in the census based population models used in earthquake casualty estimations.

Meteorological studies have indicated that high alpine environments are strongly affected by climate warming, and periglacial debris flows are frequent in deglaciated regions. The combination of rainfall and air temperature controls the initiation of periglacial debris flows, and the addition of meltwater due to higher air temperatures enhances the complexity of the triggering mechanism compared to that of storm-induced debris flows.

A catastrophic flowslide occurred at the Hongao dumpsite on 20 December 2015 in the Guangming New District of Shenzhen, China. The flowslide caused 77 causalities and damaged 33 buildings. In the absence of extreme weather conditions and seismic activity, the causes of the failure were analyzed on the basis of multi-temporal remote-sensing images, site investigation, in situ tests, laboratory tests, and numerical analyses. Site investigations showed that the volume of the displaced material was 2.32  ×  106 m3 and the volume of the pre-failure waste filling was 6.27  ×  106 m3.

Our world is prone to more frequent, deadly and costly earthquake disasters, which are increasingly uncertain and complex due to the rapid environmental and socio-economic changes occurring at multiple scales. There is an urgent need to recover rapidly and effectively for community after earthquake disasters. To enhance community recovery, it is necessary to have a good initial understanding of what it is, its determinants and how it can be measured, maintained and improved.

Prediction of earthquake in advance is really a challenging task for the scientific community till now. But research results from various scientists regarding lineament extraction using satellite imageries help us to way forward for earthquake monitoring study. For the present study, Landsat 8 OLI Time series data analyzed by integrating four different remote sensing and GIS software’s for automatic lineament extraction, its change, including lineament lengths and directions study by creating rose diagrams and finally vertical surface transect profile curve drawing.

Mangrove plantation belts are expected to act as natural infrastructural buffers against coastal hazards. However, their performance will not endure over time if the platform is not appropriately designed. In fact, despite massive funds dedicated to the rehabilitation of mangrove forests, the long-term survival rates of mangroves are generally low. This paper investigates the function of mangrove embankments in attenuating the amplitudes of ocean tides through a coupled numerical model that reproduces shallow-water wave propagations under the progress of soil consolidation.

In performance-based seismic design, ground-motion time histories are needed for analyzing dynamic responses of nonlinear structural systems. However, the number of strong-motion data at design level is often limited. In order to analyze seismic performance of structures, ground-motion time histories need to be either selected from recorded strong-motion database, or numerically simulated using stochastic approaches.

The purpose of this article is to show the extreme temperature regime of heat waves across Africa over recent years (1981–2015). Heat waves have been quantified using the Heat Wave Magnitude Index daily (HWMId), which merges the duration and the intensity of extreme temperature events into a single numerical index. The HWMId enables a comparison between heat waves with different timing and location, and it has been applied to maximum and minimum temperature records.