Natural Hazards and Disasters

Lab 2: Measuring small changes, getting data, assessing risks and disasters

Lab 2 Slides

Measuring Small Changes

In this lab, we will consider the importance of stable reference frames for measuring small changes. Geodesy is the science that provides the theory and techniques to realize stable reference frames from local to global scales.

A stable reference frames is crucial for measuring small changes. Maintaining a stable reference frame on a dynamic planet is very challenging and requires collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches. Geodesy is the science that provides the theory and techniques to realize stable reference frames from local to global scales.

Getting data

Although the Internet and World Wide Web provide many means to search for data relevant for hazards, vulnerabilities, disasters, and risks, assessing data quality is often a big challange. Traditional earth observations based on in situ instruments and remote sensing from the Earth surface or airborne and spaceborne platforms provide useful data for many natural hazards. Data for the assessment of vulnerabilities often requires the combination of Earth observations, engineering data, and socio-economic data. Crowdsourcing, citizen science program, and big data analyses increasingly are used to collect the necessary data. Information on different types of damage, lives lost or people injured, and people displaced is far more difficult to collect and new apporaches to data collection need to be developed.

Assessing major risks and disaster

Risk assessment often are impacted by limited knowledge of the hazard PDF and the vulnerabilities of the built environment and the social fabric. Major risks are often associated with low-probability high-impact events. For them, the uncertainty in probability often results in underestimation of the risk. The quantitative assessment of major disasters is impacted by data gaps and poor data quality and good indicators for the size of a disaster are missing.

Question Set 2: Observing Systems and Data Access

Answer three of the four questions.

1. Describe the main components of the observing system that provides data to inform risk management.
2. What are the two types of reference system needed to measure high-accuracy position in space and on Earth and how are they linked? How are they realized?
3. What is a reasonable database for information on disasters and what are the most relevant variables that can be used to characterize a disaster?
4. How well known is the number of death caused by the 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico? Explain the large uncertainty.

Lab Reading List

Scan through this chapter: Plag, H.-P., Altamimi, Z., Bettadpur, S., Beutler, G., Beyerle, G., Cazenave, A., Crossley, D., Donnellan, A., Forsberg, R., Gross, R., Hinderer, J., Komjathy, A., Mannucci, A. J., Ma, C., Noll, C., Nothnagel, A., Pavlis, E. C., Pearlman, M., Poli, P., Schreiber, U., Senior, K., Woodworth, P., & Zuffada, C., 2009. The goals, achievements, and tools of modern geodesy, in Global Geodetic Observing System: Meeting the Requirements of a Global Society on a Changing Planet in 2020, edited by H.-P. Plag & M. Pearlman, 15-88, Springer Berlin. This chapter is included in this pdf

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