Prevention/mitigation of natural disasters in urban areas

Abstract

Preventing/mitigating natural disasters in urban areas can indirectly be part of the 17 sustainable economic and social development intentions according to the United Nations in 2015. Four types of natural disasters—flooding, heavy rain-induced slope failures/landslides; earthquakes causing structure failure/collapse, and land subsidence—are briefly considered in this article. With the increased frequency of climate change-induced extreme weathers, the numbers of flooding and heavy rain-induced slope failures/landslides in urban areas has increased in recent years. There are both engineering methods to prevent their occurrence, and more effectively early prediction and warning systems to mitigate the resulting damage. However, earthquakes still cannot be predicted to an extent that is sufficient to avoid damage, and developing and adopting structures that are resilient against earthquakes, that is, structures featuring earthquake resistance, vibration damping, and seismic isolation, are essential tasks for sustainable city development. Land subsidence results from human activity, and is mainly due to excessive pumping of groundwater, which is a “natural” disaster caused by human activity. Countermeasures include effective regional and/or national freshwater management and local water recycling to avoid excessive pumping the groundwater. Finally, perspectives for risk warning and hazard prevention through enhanced field monitoring, risk assessment with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Planning for More Resilient and Safer Cities: A New Methodology for Seismic Risk Assessment at the Urban Scale, Applied to a Case Study in Italy

“…As highlighted by Frolova et al [4], this risk is higher for urban areas, where population, services, and economic activities are concentrated. Considering the fragility of cities against seismic events, it is crucial to include measures for preventing, mitigating, and reducing risk in spatial decision-making processes [5]. Indeed, an appropriate and high-quality planning practice helps to reduce the likelihood and the negative impacts of the event [6,7].…”

Enhancing Urban Resilience: Strategic Management and Action Plans for Cyclonic Events through Socially Constructed Risk Processes

“…A key challenge lies in understanding and quantifying the specific vulnerabilities of diverse urban systems to varying climate impacts. This requires robust data collection, modeling, and scenario analysis, considering factors like geographic location, socio-economic inequalities, and existing infrastructure [6]. Additionally, ensuring equitable access to resources and risk reduction strategies within cities requires addressing systemic inequalities that often exacerbate vulnerability for marginalized communities [7,8].…”

Risk Assessment of Geological Hazards in the Alpine Gorge Region and Its Influencing Factors: A Case Study of Jiulong County, China

“…However, all of them have certain limitations, mainly focusing on a certain defined area as the main research subject and rarely studying a certain type of area from a macroscopic point of view. In order to meet the needs of sustainable development and environmental improvement in the future, future research should pay more attention to the difficult geological elements that are seldom studied at present, and this will be an important research trend [34,35].…”