APPROACHES TO MANAGING DISASTER – ASSESSING HAZARDS, EMERGENCIES AND DISASTER IMPACTS Edited by John Tiefenbacher Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts Edited by John Tiefenbacher Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Mia Macek Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published March, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts, Edited by John Tiefenbacher p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0294-6 Contents Preface IX Chapter 1 Landslide Inventory and Susceptibility Assessment for the Ntchenachena Area, Northern Malawi (East Africa) 1 Golden Msilimba Chapter 2 Disaster Management Based on Business Process Model Through the Plant Lifecycle 19 Yukiyasu Shimada, Teiji Kitajima, Tetsuo Fuchino and Kazuhiro Takeda Chapter 3 Hydrologic Data Assimilation 41 Paul R. Houser, Gabriëlle J.M. De Lannoy and Jeffrey P. Walker Chapter 4 Automated Integration of Geosensors with the Sensor Web to Facilitate Flood Management 65 Arne Bröring, Pablo Beltrami, Rob Lemmens and Simon Jirka Chapter 5 Comprehensive Monitoring of Wildfires in Europe: The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) 87 Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, Ernst Schulte, Guido Schmuck, Andrea Camia, Peter Strobl, Giorgio Liberta, Cristiano Giovando, Roberto Boca, Fernando Sedano, Pieter Kempeneers, Daniel McInerney, Ceri Withmore, Sandra Santos de Oliveira, Marcos Rodrigues, Tracy Durrant, Paolo Corti, Friderike Oehler, Lara Vilar and Giuseppe Amatulli Chapter 6 The Impact of Natural Disasters: Simplified Procedures and Open Problems 109 Olga Petrucci Chapter 7 A Diagnostic Method for the Study of Disaster Management: A Review of Fundamentals and Practices 133 Carole Lalonde Preface Approaches to Managing Disaster is a collection of essays that demonstrate the array of types and forms of information critical for understanding the distribution of risk and hazards in the landscape and the evolution of emergencies that can potentially yield disasters. The organization of this book is intended to reflect management of components of the disaster continuum (the nature of risk, hazard, vulnerability, planning, response and adaptation) in the context of threats that derive from both nature and technology. The chapters include a selection of original research reports by an array of international scholars focused on specific locations or on specific events. The chapters are ordered temporally relative to the emergence of disaster. The first two chapters are assessments of risk or hazard in landscapes that provide disaster- prevention information that can be used for mitigation and/or emergency management planning. The next three chapters describe monitoring and information management systems that can be (and are) integrated in real-time emergency-response activities. The sixth chapter discusses methods that can be employed to evaluate the aftermath impacts of disasters, while the final chapter provides a framework for diagnosing the quality of disaster management through an after-the-fact evaluation of the responses and outcomes of disasters. Each of these chapters represent unique (but related) sets of scholarship from several disciplines that intend to contribute to safer environments and risk-averse behaviors. The over-arching goal of disaster management, of course, is to eliminate its importance to society by eliminating risk, hazard and vulnerability in the world; a goal that is by most unrecognized, unspoken and ambitious. The first chapter is a study of landslides in Malawi by Msilimba. A very practical spatial assessment of past extreme events (landslides) in the Ntchenachena region provides insight into predicting future slides and adapting precautionary behaviors to reduce their impacts. Similarly, Chapter 2 by Shimada, Kitajima, Fuchino, and Takeda develops a management plan for the risks and hazards found within the lifecycle of an industrial facility. While the objects of their study are radically different in nature and scope, and one study is empirical and the other theoretical, they are both seeking to identify the “locations” of failures through a conceptualization of ongoing processes due manage the probabilities of “accidents.” X Preface Information management is now recognised to be one of the most challenging aspects of emergency management as science has technologically enabled the epoch of information gathering. Being able to “know” the facts and being able to “act” on the knowledge gathered requires a very complex bridge process. For the actions to be useful, that bridge must be constructed (or simply crossed) with limited time for decisions to be made. Integrating the technology of monitoring with emerging technologies for analysis and decision making, remains a challenge to most disaster managers who are differentially trained. Three chapters by Houser, De Lannoy and Walker, Bröring, Lemmens and Jirka, and San Miguel-Ayanz, Schulte, Schmuck, Camia, Strobl, Liberta, Giovando, Boca, Sedano, Kempeneers, McInerney, Withmore, Santos de Oliveira, Rodrigues, Durrant, Corti, Oehler, Vilar, and Amatulli, detail the complicated nature of managing floods, wildfires and other dynamic events using “fluid” information in constantly evolving conditions in several settings. Bridging the information – action gap in the era of “smart” technology will only be achieved incrementally. The penultimate chapter of this volume is by Petrucci who through analysis of the literature and a case analysis of damage reports provides a structure for an objective quantitative analysis of the social and economic impacts of disasters. Her discussion of the Natural Disaster Impact Assessment as it relates to extreme hydrological and geophysical events in Italy ,demonstrates the challenges and pitfalls associated with converting the experience of disaster into comparable quantifications. The ramifications of impact analyses for decision-making and financial prioritization in any country are somewhat obvious and the work she discusses is very important. The final chapter by Lalonde assesses not the impacts of events but the outcome of management of disasters. Based on a reading of the disaster management literature, Lalonde develops a rubric for evaluating four components of management (planning and preparedness, coordination, leadership and civic (including the at-large public, grassroots leaders, and the media) behaviors). She examines emergency management in four specific disasters and assesses the successes and failures of management during those events. Her diagnostic model for assessment demonstrates that there is a major disconnect between the emergency-management theoreticians and practitioners. The principals and guidelines established in the literature by the scholars who constantly assess and reassess the processes, she concludes, are inevitably overlooked or ignored by the practitioners who either lack the time or training to follow them. Indeed, this “separation” may be the greatest challenge to all risk, hazard and disaster management practices that may be called the disaster paradox: “we” (scholars) basically know what needs to be done, what people (the public and managers) should do, and where, when and how to do what should be done, but “we” (the public and managers in general) don’t do what should be done. With all of the knowledge compiled and converted to useful guidance for disaster management (much like that which is found in these pages), we lack the practical capacity to integrate the lessons [...]... rainfall of low intensity prior to the landslide events, suggesting inflow exceeded discharge, resulting in higher pore pressure and liquefaction 12 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts 3000 Rainfall (mm) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 Years Fig 3 Annual Rainfall Totals for the Ntchenachena Area from 1977 to 2001 (Note annual totals for years after 2001 were... employees and managers However, companies have specific organizational frameworks, administrative structures, policies or strategies of operations management, and specialized engineering techniques (individual methods, procedures, tools, etc.), and therefore the standardization of business processes 20 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts and the development... units of the Ntchenachena Area; at Lutowo 35 landslides occurred on concave slopes, 12 on convex and 8 on linear/rectilinear; at Kasosokola the landslide occurred on a concave slope; At Kasese Proper, all the landslides occurred on concave slopes; at Mankholongo, 11 were on concave 8 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts while 1 was on convex; at Chikwegza,... factor in triggering of landslides and damage to structure Documenta Naturae 136:93 – 98 Kemp J (1975) The geology of the Uzumara area Geological Survey Department, Zomba Knapen J, Kitutu M, Poesen J (2006) Landslides in densely populated county at the foot slopes of Mount Elgon (Uganda): Characteristics and causal factors Journal of Geomorphology 73:14 9–1 65 18 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing. .. table form (Table 2A and 2B) and are explained below 10 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts Topographic Clay% Silt% Sand% Hydrau Remark Porosity Liquid Plastic Bulk Aggregate Plasticity Unit lic Con Index Limit Limit Density Stability Index (cm/hr) Kasokoloka 29.00 16.75 54.25 5.88 Moderate 55.66 44.21 27.86 1.18 2.88 16.35 Lutowo 17.72 15.63 66.63... a common strategy and vision for the delivery and use of internationally accepted standards for information sharing and exchange (ISO-STEP), and developed a business process model to represent the core business activity of the chemical process industry (PIEBASE, 1998) The 22 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts PIEBASE model uses a template approach... and aerial photographs (after 1995) were not available, ground reference data and Landsat 7 ETM images were used to delineate the area Reference data was used to correct errors caused by scale distortions on aerial photographs and topographic maps Interpretation of aerial photographs was done following the standard procedures (Shaxson et al 1996) Ancient landslides inventory Ancient landslides were... prior to the landslide events was probably high The 206mm of rain which fell in the Ntchenachana area, was unusual and above average This unusually high rainfall coupled with high sand content, moderately high porosity, and moderately rapid hydraulic conductivity increased pore pressure between the soil particles contributing to the liquefaction 14 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies. .. out to determine the dipping angle, slope angle and foliation trends, using a Silva compass The geological map of South Uzumara at a scale 1:100 000 was also used (GoM 1977) Additional information was obtained from the Livingstonia Coalfield and the Geology of the Uzumara Area Bulletin (Bloemfield 1968; Kemp 1975) Fieldwork 6 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster. .. due to increased seasonal burning of the trees, bushes and shrubs for shifting (slash and burn) cultivation and hunting The increase in seasonal burning is due to growing population levels in the area Landslide Inventory and Susceptibility Assessment for the Ntchenachena Area, Northern Malawi (East Africa) Fig 1 Map of Malawi Showing Location of Rumphi District 3 4 Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing . APPROACHES TO MANAGING DISASTER – ASSESSING HAZARDS, EMERGENCIES AND DISASTER IMPACTS Edited by John Tiefenbacher Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards,. factors of the landslides and describes a simple susceptibility appraisal procedure for the Ntchenachena Area. Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts. Livingstonia Coalfield and the Geology of the Uzumara Area Bulletin (Bloemfield 1968; Kemp 1975). Fieldwork Approaches to Managing Disaster – Assessing Hazards, Emergencies and Disaster Impacts