Disaster Advances

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Disaster Advances





Social vulnerability index to natural hazards: A case study of Shanghai, China

Yongling Zhang, Lu Chen and Xiaoming Chuai

Natural hazards can cause huge economic losses and serious damage to the society. The analysis of social vulnerability to natural hazard can greatly aid decision-making and governance and be also essential for regional disaster mitigation as well as sustainable development of society. Being taken as example, Shanghai was chosen to establish a social vulnerability index system of natural hazards from three dimensions including population, economy and disaster mitigation based on the analysis of influencing factors of social vulnerability on natural hazards. The social vulnerability indexes were reduced from 45 to 14 by sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, the comprehensive social vulnerability indexes were determined according to population, economy and disaster mitigation including 5 social vulnerability indexes for population, 3 social vulnerability indexes for economy and 6 social vulnerability indexes for disaster mitigation. Finally, the SVI for vulnerability indexes was calculated by collective model and its spatial differences for Shanghai were analyzed using GIS technology. The study provided an example of the research on the social vulnerability to natural hazard.

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Grey Rainfall-Stage Model for forecasting Flash Flood Stages during Typhoons

Shien-Tsung Chen

Typhoons often bring severe rainfall that causes flash floods and related disasters. An efficient flood forecasting model can provide informative forecasts to mitigate disasters. This study proposes a grey rainfall-stage model based on the hydrologic concept of the rainfall-stage process and the assumption of grey system theory to process hydrologic variables by applying the accumulated generating operation. Flash flood events in Wu River, Taiwan, during typhoons were collected as the study data. The proposed grey rainfall-stage model was applied to forecast flood stages multiple hours ahead. Calibration and validation results show that the grey rainfall-stage model can perform real-time flood stage forecasting. Moreover, potential improvements of the grey rainfall-stage model include deriving various model structures and applying different parameter calibration schemes.

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Parametric study on brick masonry using finite element method

Vasanthi P., Gopalakrishnan R. and Satyanarayanan K.S.

The properties of brick masonry are influenced by factors that are related to the brick, mortar, joint and inclination of the applied load to the bed joint. In order to investigate the influence of load at different inclination to bed joint for different thickness of mortar compressive strength to the uniaxial compressive strength of brick masonry, this study is carried out by analytical investigation using computer finite element software to predict the normal stress, normal elastic strain and total deformation in ANSYS Workbench 12.0. Nine combinations of unit to mortar strength (H-H, H-M, H-L, M-H, M-M, M-L, L-H, L-M,L-L), five different angle of inclinations between load and bed joint (0°, 30°,45°,60°,90°), three different thickness of mortar joint ( 5 mm, 7.5 mm, 10 mm) and two different materials for capping (cork, lead) are included from the results, the effective modulus of elasticity in each case is derived and compared. It is found that the highest value is 16.94 times and lowest value is 0.09 times that of conventional value, namely, that for bed joint angle of 90°. These highest values occur for the case of H-L strength parameter and 10 mm thickness with 0° angle. And lowest value occurs for the case of H-H strength parameter and 5 mm thickness with 90° angle.

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Seismic Design of Pile Foundation for Oil Tank by using PLAXIS3D

Kumar Ashutosh, Choudhury Deepankar, Shukla Jaykumar and Shah D. L.

Analysis and design of pile foundations in soft soil strata to support any geotechnical structures especially oil tanks are very important for geotechnical practitioners and more so in earthquake prone areas. In this paper, a complete design of pile foundation for oil tank in Iraq is mentioned by providing the details of soil strata at the site of oil tank construction which is in seismically active region. A finite element analysis by using PLAXIS3D for the design of pile foundation for oil tank in Iraq is carried out for both static and seismic loading conditions. In-situ soil at the site varies from loose fill material followed by soft to stiff clay layers and then by dense sand layer. First, the basic static design of suitable pile foundation which is based on field observed ground details have been carried out in PLAXIS3D. A group of 89 piles of 26m length with 400mm radius each is proposed for the oil tank of height 15m and 23.5m diameter to withstand a maximum credible earthquake (MCE) of 0.15g. Results for pile foundations in terms of settlements, differential settlements between piles, bending moments are obtained by using finite element numerical modeling using PLAXIS3D and proposed as final design of the foundation system for oil tank at the specific soft soil site in Iraq.

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