According to the United Nations' International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, ''natural hazards are processes or phenomena that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage''. They are at the interface between human and natural systems. From this perspective, natural hazards are a multidimensional domain including environmental issues, the private and public sector and citizens and governance ranging from local to supranational. The vast amount of information and data necessary for comprehensive hazard and risk assessment present many challenges regarding the lack of accessibility, comparability, quality, organisation and dissemination of natural hazards spatial data. In order to mitigate these limitations, an interoperability framework has been developed and published in the INSPIRE Data Specification on Natural Risk Zonestechnical guidelines (DS) document. This framework provides means for facilitating access, integration, harmonisation and dissemination of natural hazard data from different domains and sources. The objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the paper highlights
123Nat Hazards (2015) 78:1545-1563 DOI 10.1007/s11069-015-1786 the key aspects of the interoperability to the various natural hazard communities and illustrates the applicability of the interoperability framework developed in the DS. And secondly, the paper ''translates'' into common language the main features and potentiality of the interoperability framework of the DS for a wider audience of scientists and practitioners in the natural hazard domain. In this paper, the four pillars of the interoperability framework will be presented. First, the adoption of a common terminology for the natural hazard domain will be addressed. A common data model to facilitate cross-domain data integration will then follow. Thirdly, the common methodology developed to express qualitative or quantitative assessments of natural hazards is presented. Fourthly, the extensible classification schema for natural hazards developed from a literature review and key reference documents from the contributing community of practice is discussed. Furthermore, the applicability of the interoperability framework for the various stakeholder groups is illustrated. This paper closes discussing main advantages, limitations and next steps regarding the sustainability and evolution of the interoperability framework.
Las Loras UNESCO Global Geopark (UGGp) is geologically diverse, particularly in relation to water-derived features: springs, karst springs, travertine buildings, waterfalls, caves. In this work, the interactions between geology, geomorphology, structures and hydrogeology are analyzed. As a result of this study, a first conceptual model of the hydrogeological functioning at Las Loras UGGp is presented. The most plausible hypothesis is that the system is formed by two superimposed aquifer systems, separated by an aquitard formed by Lower Cretaceous material. The deep lower aquifer formed by the Jurassic limestones only outcrops on the northern and southern edges of the Geopark and in a small arched band to the south of Aguilar de Campoo. It forms a basement subject to intense deformation. The upper aquifer system, formed by outcropping materials from the Upper Cretaceous, is a free aquifer. It is formed by a multilayered aquifer system that is highly compartmentalized, constituting individual moorland and lora units acting as a separate recharge–discharge system. This model explains the base level of the permanent rivers and the abundant springs, important components of the water cycle and representing a contribution to the rich geological heritage of the location.
After the Haiti quake of 2010 an initiative started to better understand shaking effects in the Dominican Republic after natural earthquakes, in particular in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, the second city in the country as far as inhabitants and economic wealth are concerned. Santiago has suffered several devastating earthquakes; in 1562 the city was rebuilt on a new site (the current location) further south from the responsible fault. It is well known that damage caused by an earthquake occurs associated to a number of factors, ground acceleration is one of them and is usually considered as the key to explain most of the damage. Ground acceleration varies from one point to another depending mainly on: distance to the source of the rupture, soil properties and topography. Regarding the distance, the further from the source the less acceleration is expected due to distance attenuation. On the other hand, different soil properties and different topographies will produce different responses to the propagating wave. Within the range of a few kilometres, the effect of distance attenuation might be far less relevant than the effect of the varying properties of soils. This paper gathers together results obtained from the seismic hazard and microzonation studies developed in the city of Santiago: i) quantification of regional seismic hazard dominated by the Septentrional fault, ii) a new geological mapping of superficial formations, and iii) mapping of zones of homogeneous seismic response and liquefaction susceptibility.
A semi-quantitative heuristic methodology is developed to map a rockfall detachment susceptibility zonation of El Hierro Island (Canary Archipelago). The rationalized procedure, which we called non-weighted bounded indicators, is based on overlapping thematic maps of conditioning factors to mass movement, which are appropriately and individually rescaled and then composed by addition to obtain a susceptibility numerical index through a GIS. As the consistency of the geomorphological analysis depends on the expert subjective criteria and the appropriate interpretation of the landscape, the use of this methodology reduces subjectivity and quantifies the degree of susceptibility. The main factors affecting the mass movement phenomena (rockfalls events), also recognized in the field and, therefore, considered in the presented GIS arrangement, are slope, profile curvature, lithology, vegetation cover and dykes density. To calculate the slope threshold or minimum angle characteristic of rockfall source areas, mixed Gaussian slope frequency decomposition is used. The curvature index reveals stepwise areas. Qualitative geomechanical characteristics are linked to a quantitative index according to a volcanic lithological-complexes classification. Both destabilization (root-wedging) and
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