The 4th October 2010 flash flood event in Genoa Sestri Ponente (Liguria, Italy)

Faccini Francesco, Luino Fabio, Sacchini Alessandro and Turconi Laura

The Mediterranean Sea and in particular the Liguria region have always been suffering from severe geo-hydrological events. Landform features and autumnal atmospheric circulation deeply influence the hazard in Genoa city, the capital of Liguria, crossed by many streams: heavy rainfall can trigger flash floods involving structures and infrastructures, often causing fatalities. The recent growth of events characterized by intense rainfall and floods has been amplified by the urban sprawl of flood-plain: these factors seem to be the most important causes in the increase of damage related to geo-hydrological events. In this case, typical of the whole Genoan Metropolitan area, a severe event occurred in Sestri Ponente district on October 4th 2010: a critical rainfall, over 400 mm/6 hours, a peak of 125 mm/h, triggered shallow landslides and flash floods in the Molinassi and Chiaravagna catchments crossing Sestri Ponente, causing one fatality and damage of over 60 million euros. These watercourses show the typical features of Ligurian basins: small areas, steep slopes, proximity of watersheds to the coastline and intense urbanization of the plain. During this event, the hydrological response to rainfall was almost immediate, with times of concentration shorter than 25 minutes. The narrow plain on which Sestri Ponente rises was completely flooded.

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Dynamic Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Plates subjected to Blast Load

Sindhura P.L.N. and Elavenil S.

The paper reports on the study of the behavior of reinforced concrete plates subjected to explosion. Blast loading occurs in a very short duration which is categorized as an impulsive loading. Mathematically blast loading is considered as a triangular one. Non linear dynamic analysis using finite element method is carried out. The main parameters are positive phase of blast loading, effect of thickness, equivalent weight of TNT and stand- off distance of the explosive. Modeling has been performed by using ANSYS software .The results obtained in terms of time history displacements and influence of the parameters considering the nonlinear dynamic analysis of concrete plates are subjected to blast load.

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Text Mining Analysis of Twitter as a Communication Medium post the Nepal Earthquake Disaster in 2015 – An Empirical Analysis

Kaila Rajesh Prabhakar

Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. play a crucial role during disaster management as crucial information is disseminated to public at large during and post disaster crisis. Twitter being micro blogging site with 140 character short messages is highly effective in disaster communications as proven by academic studies that studied twitter communications during various natural disasters in past few years. This study focuses on the role of twitter communications post the Nepal earthquake and a sample of 5000 tweets are analyzed using text mining cluster analysis. User tweets focused on disseminating information about the extent of earthquake damage, death toll, missing persons and shortages of supplies. The study concluded that Twitter has played a significant role in terms of communicating the information about the earthquake, relief efforts, aid and sympathy towards the affected populations.

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A Study on the Resilience of Coastal Community - Post Tsunami

Ilango Sivakumar and Sivagamasundari R.

In this study, a meta-analysis has been conducted to synthesize insights from several interviews and documentation with the community living near coastlines on the reasons why the community relies on the coastal area even after the disaster event 2004 Tsunami triggered their lives. The migration index hence calculated falls beneath three categories such as belief, occupational requirements and life style subjected to six major reasons. The reasons thus considered here for analysis are their living environment, boat and net security, no fear with sea, occupation, they believe in no future Tsunami and have good warning systems. On considering these reasons as parameters, a statistical model is proposed in this study using discriminant analysis. From the study, it was identified that the boat net security, warning system and occupational requirements are the most discriminating functions which affect the community. Hence, a better route to improve warning system and evacuation plan should be identified for the community in coastal area rather to relocate them from their adopted environment provided in practice besides a key element for future resettlement planning.

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