The adverse effect of climate change continues to expand, and the risks of flooding are increasing. Despite advances in network science and risk analysis, we lack a systematic mathematical framework for road network percolation under the disturbance of flooding. The difficulty is rooted in the unique three-dimensional nature of a flood, where altitude plays a critical role as the third dimension, and the current network-based framework is unsuitable for it. Here we develop a failure model to study the effect of floods on road networks; the result covers 90.6% of road closures and 94.1% of flooded streets resulting from Hurricane Harvey. We study the effects of floods on road networks in China and the United States, showing a discontinuous phase transition, indicating that a small local disturbance may lead to a large-scale systematic malfunction of the entire road network at a critical point. Our integrated approach opens avenues for understanding the resilience of critical infrastructure networks against floods.
After the Wenchuan earthquake (magnitude 7.9, May 12, 2008), intensive debates on how China should establish a natural disaster insurance system were initiated among researchers, policymakers, and insurance professionals. Our focus was the social aspects of disaster insurance, explored in China through a nationwide survey. Our questionnaires investigated people's risk awareness, insurance acceptance, their opinions on governmental measures for disaster management, and their willingness to pay for disaster house insurance. We analyzed the results at both regional and individual scales. We found that the integrated hazard index and respondents' experience of insurance (considered objective factors), and their opinions on the importance of insurance and government responsibility (considered subjective factors) showed strong correlation with the regional overall acceptance of disaster insurance. An individual's decision to participate highly depended on his/her experience of both insurance and disaster and his/her opinion on the importance of insurance as a coping mechanism. Respondents from poverty-stricken or less-developed counties were not necessarily more reluctant to accept natural disaster insurance, though they exhibited relatively lower ability to afford insurance. In general, respondents had correct perceptions of natural disasters in their areas; however, people from regions with a greater multihazard threat showed less willingness to accept disaster insurance because they tended to expect the government to undertake to cover losses and considered insurance to be less important. People's willingness to pay for an assumed disaster house insurance was also investigated and analyzed. We consequently discuss the policy implications for developing a disaster insurance system in China.
Abstract:In recent decades, climate change has affected vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau's Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region in central China using MODIS-NDVI data for 2000-2014. We examined the roles of regional climate change and human activities in vegetation restoration, particularly from 1999 when conversion of sloping farmland to forestland or grassland began under the national Grain-for-Green program. Our results indicated a general upward trend in average NDVI values in the study area. The region's annual growth rate greatly exceeded those of the Three-North Shelter Forest, the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the Qinling-Daba Mountains, and the Three-River Headwater region. The green vegetation zone has been annually extending from the southeast toward the northwest, with about 97. 11164of ecological engineering projects. Under favorable climatic conditions, increasing local vegetation cover is primarily attributable to ecosystem reconstruction projects. However, our findings indicate a growing risk of vegetation degradation in the northern part of Shaanxi Province as a result of energy production facilities and chemical industry infrastructure, and increasing exploitation of mineral resources.
The year 2015 is the 25th annum of the international disaster and risk reduction proposed by the United Nations. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) has achieved significant progress worldwide. The goals of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development have become the joint responsibility of all countries in their economic, societal, cultural, political, and ecological construction activities. In the past 25 years, UNISDR together with national governments, scientific community, NGOs, entrepreneur groups, media and various relevant regional organizations is gaining effective results in alleviating human being's casualties, property losses, and damages to resources and environment caused by natural hazards on the world and is earning a great reputation at every stratum of society as well. Nevertheless, data released by related UN organizations indicate that natural disaster and disaster risk are still on the rise globally. Some nations and regions are still extremely vulnerable to large-scale disasters, although significant progress has been made in DRR actions. Natural disaster risk reduction is still a long haul ahead. FoundationsThe global hot spots project jointly finished by the World Bank and Columbia University (the USA) is the first ever cartography of major natural disaster risks at the global scale (Dilley et al. 2005). The UNISDR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) inspired this Atlas (UN-ISDR 2009, 2011 All faculties and students of BNU on the disaster risk science and the international experts who participated in the IHDP/Future Earth-Integrated Risk Governance and "111 Project", as well as all the personnel involved in these two projects, throughout ten years of preparation, planning, and action, were organized to compile this atlas, aiming to reflect the spatial patterns of the main natural disaster risk all around the world. This atlas provides scientific evidence for taking effective measures of world natural disaster risk reduction by demonstrating the spatial variation from the following three spatial scales for the main natural disaster risk on the world: the grid unit (1°× 1°, 0.75°× 0.75°, 0.5°× 0.5°, 0.25°× 0.25°, 0.1°× 0.1°or 1 km × 1 km), the comparable geographic unit (about 448,334 km 2 per unit), and the national or regional unit (245 nations and regions). International Scientific and Technological CooperationClose cooperation with worldwide scientific institutions lays the scientific foundation of this Atlas. Scientific BasisThe World Atlas of Natural Disaster Risk attempts to reveal the spatial pattern of the risks of natural disaster which are mainly caused by physical hazards in the world with multiple perspectives of natural environment, exposure, disaster loss, and disaster risk with the framework of Regional Disaster System Theory (Shi 1991(Shi , 1996(Shi , 2002(Shi , 2005(Shi , 2009. It emphasizes the spatial-temporal pattern of worldwide natural disasters from the perspective of individual disasters and integrated disasters, in...
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