Smoke from wildfires poses a significant threat to affected communities. Prescribed burning is conducted to reduce the extent and potential damage of wildfires, but produces its own smoke threat. Planners of prescribed fires model the likely dispersion of smoke to help manage the impacts on local communities. Significant uncertainty remains about the actual smoke impact from prescribed fires, especially near the fire, and the accuracy of smoke dispersal models.

In May 2014, extreme floods occurred in the lower Sava River basin, causing major damage, with catastrophic consequences. Based on the data gathered, the weather situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) Bosna River basin was analysed and the hydrological conditions were provided, including the results of the probability analysis of the size of the recorded precipitation and flow rates. According to the observed data, extremely high precipitation intensities produced specific discharges of 1.0 m3 s−1 km−2.

GLOF is low-frequency event, but it often causes enormous loss and damage of life, property and human environment in downstream regions. The economic losses caused by GLOF are much higher than the project costs to early consolidate moraine dam and release flood waters. Glacial lake outbursts can be very difficult and expensive to control, but regional exposure and vulnerability of exposed elements downstream can be reduced by improving adaptation capacity and risk management level.

Volcanic mudflows, called 'lahars', can cause large amounts of damage to buildings. In this research we have developed a method to estimate lahar induced building damage based on the height, speed and amount of volcanic material in the lahar. This method was applied to a small region in Arequipa, Peru, where computer models were used to estimate the number of buildings affected by lahars. The research found that building location and the size of the flow are most important in determining damage.

This paper presents an innovative web-based decision support system to facilitate emergency management in the case of oil spill accidents, called WITOIL (Where Is The Oil). The system can be applied to create a forecast of oil spill events, evaluate uncertainty of the predictions, and calculate hazards based on historical meteo-oceanographic datasets. To compute the oil transport and transformation, WITOIL uses the MEDSLIK-II oil spill model forced by operational meteo-oceanographic services. Results of the modeling are visualized through Google Maps.

The forecasting of inundation levels during typhoons requires that multiple objectives be taken into account, including the forecasting capacity with regard to variations in water level throughout the entire weather event, the accuracy that can be attained in forecasting peak water levels, and the time at which peak water levels are likely to occur. This paper proposed a means of forecasting inundation levels in real time using monitoring data from a water-level gauging network.

This paper presents a study on short-term ensemble flood forecasting specifically for small dam catchments in Japan. Numerical ensemble simulations of rainfall from the Japan Meteorological Agency nonhydrostatic model (JMA-NHM) are used as the input data to a rainfall–runoff model for predicting river discharge into a dam. The ensemble weather simulations use a conventional 10 km and a high-resolution 2 km spatial resolutions. A distributed rainfall–runoff model is constructed for the Kasahori dam catchment (approx. 70 km2) and applied with the ensemble rainfalls.

During the autumn of 2011 two catastrophic, very intense rainfall events affected two different parts of the Liguria Region of Italy causing various flash floods. The first occurred in October and the second at the beginning of November. Both the events were characterized by very high rainfall intensities (> 100 mm h−1) that persisted on a small portion of territory causing local huge rainfall accumulations (> 400 mm 6 h−1).

Original Source

This paper presents the findings from a study aimed at understanding whether video games (or serious games) can be effective in enhancing volcanic hazard education and communication. Using the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent, we have developed a video game – St. Vincent's Volcano – for use in existing volcano education and outreach sessions. Its twin aims are to improve residents' knowledge of potential future eruptive hazards (ash fall, pyroclastic flows and lahars) and to integrate traditional methods of education in a more interactive manner.

In our first study on possible flood damages under climate change in Germany, we reported that a considerable increase in flood-related losses can be expected in a future warmer climate. However, the general significance of the study was limited by the fact that outcome of only one global climate model (GCM) was used as a large-scale climate driver, while many studies report that GCMs are often the largest source of uncertainty in impact modelling.