Identification of the landslide using the satellite images and the digital image correlation method

Tung Shih-Heng1, Shih Ming-Hsiang2and Sung Wen-Pei3

Large earthquakes, typhoons and heavy rains often cause the slide of hillside. In recent years, global warming causes the increase of extreme weather and it leads to the raise of the occurrence frequency of landslide disaster. Since most of these disasters occur in the remote mountainous areas and they are often accompanied with traffic interruption, the rescue and investigation works are very difficult to carry out. Digital image correlation (DIC) method is a noncontact optical measurement method. The progress of digital camera and computational capability of computer leads to the wide application of the digital image correlation technique to different research fields. Because the landslides will change the appearance of the ground surface and the satellite images are already widely used in the remote sensing technology, we can use the DIC method and the satellite images to monitor the occurrence of landslide. The principle of digital image correlation method is to identify the positions on two images with the highestcorrelation. However, landslides lead to a low correlation between two images. Therefore, this study modified the digital images correlation method to find out the positions with low correlation on satellite images. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) are also used to assist in the reduction of the misidentification.

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The effect of solar cycle’s activities on earthquake: a conceptual idea for forecasting

Nikouravan Bijan1, Pirasteh Saied2,4* and Mollaee Somayeh3

It has been seen that the period of solar activity and its cycle has a decrease of seismic activity in the compression zone of the Earth. In addition, at the same time there is an increase of the activity in the tension zones of the Earth. This study has been emphasized on last 45 years (i.e. 1960-2005) cyclic data in term of the number of seismic and sunspots activities. The high correlation between sunspot and earthquakes shows that there is long-term forecast for the earthquakes mainly in Iran, Japan and USA in and after 2010. The next maximum of seismic activities and earthquakes with very high amplitude for the tension zones on the Earth has forecasted for the period 2012-2013mainly in the night. This has been alarming for the countries that fall within the seismic region such as Iran, Japan, USA etc. and if the Governments do not make the infrastructure strengthen, there may be more disasters and loss of life and properties in future.

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Climatological impact of solar activity on geo-extreme events

Bose M.1* and Bal Sourabh2

The connection between solar influence in 11-year scale with extreme events like earthquakes and tsunamis at decadal variability is confirmed by the spectral analysis. A significant signal in decadal scale is obtained for tsunami events for three centuries but weak signal is obtained for earthquakes at the same time scale. The earthquake variability at decadal scale is prominent for 100 year period (1902-2002) at most excepted seismic strength range. The number of earthquakes is distributed over different regions as a function of magnitude of the earthquake. The selected time period and strength of the earthquake contribute to explain the two peaks around sunspot maximum and support well with the proposed mechanism which states that the energy from the sun gets transferred down to earth triggering earth tectonic movement.

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Climate Change Scenario in Kashmir Valley, India, based on Seasonal and Annual Average Temperature Trends

Islam Zahoor Ul1* and Rao Liaqat Ali Khan

The trends in climatic indices such as the seasonal and annual average temperatures in Kashmir valley were examined by established statistical technique of linear regression analysis. The rates of increase/decrease of these climatic indices were computed by linear regression slope (b) method. To explain the significance of observed trends, 1-tailed Student’s T-test (at 95% confidence level) was also carried out. The results reveal that on the whole there have been increasing trends in the seasonal and annual average temperatures in the studied area, with the winter and spring seasons warming at higher rates (statistically significant) than the summer and autumn. The results show that during the period 1991-2005, the winter, spring and summer average temperatures were higher by 1.00C and 0.40C and 0.30C from their respective standard normals of 1961-1990. The autumn remained unchanged during this period. However the annual average temperature was higher by 0.40C from its respective standard normal during this period. Moreover, during the thirty-year period, 1961-1990 there have been 16 instances when the annual average temperature (Tavg) has been 110C or more. But during the fifteen-year period, 1991-2005 there have been 13 instances when the temperature has been 110C. Furthermore, during the later period, the only two years of 1991 and 1992 have recorded the average temperature lesser than 110C. 1991 and 1992 were the years when a drop in air temperature was recorded globally. This drop in the average temperature is also reflected in our data set.

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Mitigation of Accidental Disasters in Fireworks Industries – Construction Management Approach

Ramaswamy S.N.,1* Nampoothiri N.V.N.2 and Sekar T.2

Manmade disasters due to accidental explosions while manufacturing fire crackers are reported very often in India. These accidental disasters also cause collapse of brick masonry structures leading to loss of human lives and infrastructure regularly. Existing construction guidelines lack any explosion resisting features and hence the need of framing appropriate explosion resistant construction guidelines was already highlighted.1-4 The performance of brick masonry incorporating RCC horizontal bands at floor level, lintel level and vertical RCC bands at corners and door jambs was considered in this study. Alternate shapes of the model structure like square and hexagon were also considered in this study. The model structures were subjected to explosive loading as uniform pressure on wall surface. The studies were conducted using ANSYS software. Based on the threshold value of deflection as one tenth of wall thickness of brick masonry, an estimate of the quantity of chemicals that can be used in a manufacturing shed, for various explosion resisting features is suggested so that collapse of structures causing disasters can be minimized.

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Approach for feature weighted support vector machine and its application in flood disaster evaluation

Weiping Deng P.1,2 and Zhou Jianzhong1*

Hierarchical comprehensive evaluation method is widely used in flood disaster loss assessment and risk prediction of strength. How to improve its performance and tempo is still a continuous research problem. Support vector machine (SVM) is proved to be one of most effective method to solve the classification problem of small samples. However, the traditional SVM does not reflect difference of different indexes and leads to error. So we propose the combined weighted SVM (CWSVM) to evaluate flood disaster grade. The model modifies the kernel function of SVM and solves the problem that samples’ Euclidian distances are necessary to really embody the feature difference. Besides, the model modifies the distance by both the objective value difference and the subjective human conventions. By comparative analyzing the assessment results of flood disaster data in China from 1950 to 2009, the CWSVM obtained higher classification precision. The research offers a new efficient way to solve multi-index comprehensively evaluation problem.

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Seismic Fragility Evaluation of Multi-Branch Piping Systems installed in Critical Low-Rise Buildings

BuSeog Ju1and WooYoung Jung2*

The failure of nonstructural components such as piping, ceiling, mechanical and electrical equipments led to operational and functional problems in structural system during the past severe earthquakes. Consequently, in the last few decades, a reduction of the damage to nonstructural components or an improvement on the performance of nonstructural component has emerged as a key area of research. The primary objective of this research was to develop the seismic fragility of the piping system incorporating the multi T-joint branch piping systems. The procedure for evaluating fragility curves corresponding to the first damage limit state considered the effects of each floor acceleration-sensitivity for low-rise RC and steel frame building structures subjected to 50 selected ground motions as function of uncertainties. The result of this study revealed that the conditional probability of failure to the piping system on each floor level in critical facilities increased with increased level of floor and in fact, floor level in low-rise buildings can tune the fragilities between the building and the piping system

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