Hussain Saleh

A GIS tool for flood risk analysis in Flanders (Belgium)

In recent decades, the low-lying Flanders region (Belgium) has fallen victim to numerous flood events, causing substantial damage to buildings and infrastructure. In response to this, the Flemish government proposed a new approach that considers the level of risk as method of safety measurement. Using geographical information systems, this evolution has led to a comprehensive risk methodology, and more recently to the development of a flood risk assessment tool called LATIS. By estimating the potential damage and the number of casualties during a flood event, LATIS offers the possibility of performing risk analysis in a fast and effective way. This paper presents a brief overview of the currently used methodology for flood risk management in Flanders and its implementation in the LATIS tool. The usefulness of this new tool is demonstrated by a sequence of risk calculations, performed in the framework of climate change impacts on flood risk in Flanders.

Disaster Management and Risk Reduction: Impacts of Sea Level Rise and Other Hazards Related to Tsunamis on Syrian Coastal Zone

The rapid development of economic construction and urbanization, highly dense population, infrastructure and traffic, all have caused a lot of troubles to the main cities in the Syrian coastal region. In addition, this region which is located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and among Arabian, African and European Asian plates is suffering from increasing the number of natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, climate change, flash flooding, and mainly the expected sea level rise. This rise effect often depends on many elements, such as seismic hazard, vulnerability, exposure and emergency response and recovery capability. It is not possible to completely avoid this rise, but the sufferings can be minimized by creating proper awareness of this hazard and its impacts through developing an integrated system of the geographical and environmental data collection and management tools with simulation and decision tools for risk reduction and assessment. Great change becomes to integrated management and more to eco-environmental safety construction, especially to the prevention for disasters destroyed structure as sea level rise. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to address the need for an integrated disaster risk management in Syrian coastal zone. This will help to manage the risk of these disasters and hazards in a more effective manner through linking up disaster management more closely and consistently with urban planning and management.

Scientific Research Based Optimisation and Geo-information Technologies for Integrating Environmental Planning in Disaster Management

Natural and environmental disasters have profound social, economic, psychological, and demographic effects on the stricken individuals and communities. The literature of disaster management of the 21th Century has pointed out that there is a missing part in the knowledge, scientific research, and technological development that can optimise disaster risk reduction. With the improvement of dynamic optimisation and geo-information technologies, it has become very important to determine optimal solutions based on the stability and accuracy of the measurements that support disaster management and risk reduction. However, a scientific approach to the solution of these disasters requires robotic algorithms that can provide a degree of functionality for spatial representation and flexibility suitable for quickly creating optimal solution that account for the uncertainty present in the changing environment of these disasters. Moreover, the volume of data collected for these disasters is growing rapidly, and sophisticated means to optimise this volume in a consistent, dynamic and economical procedure are essential. This chapter effectively links wider strategic aims of bringing together innovative ways of thinking based on scientific research, knowledge and technology in many scientific disciplines to providing optimal solutions for disaster management and risk reduction. Real-life applications using these disciplines will be presented.