Maria Papathoma-Köhle

Improvement of vulnerability curves using data from extreme events: debris flow event in South Tyrol

Alpine hazards such as debris flow, floods, snow avalanches, rock falls, and landslides pose a significant threat to local communities. The assessment of the vulnerability of the built environment to these hazards in the context of risk analysis is a topic that is growing in importance due to global environmental change impacts as well as socio-economic changes. Hence, the vulnerability is essential for the development of efficient risk reduction strategies. In this contribution, a methodology for the development of a vulnerability curve as a function of the intensity of the process and the degree of loss is presented. After some modifications, this methodology can also be used for other types of hazards in the future. The curve can be a valuable tool in the hands of local authorities, emergency and disaster planners since it can assist decision making and cost–benefit analysis of structural protection measures by assessing the potential cost of future events. The developed methodology is applied in two villages (Gand and Ennewasser) located in Martell valley, South Tyrol, Italy. In the case study area, buildings and infrastructure suffered significant damages following a debris flow event in August 1987. The event caused extensive damage and was very well documented. The documented data were used to create a vulnerability curve that shows the degree of loss corresponding to different process intensities. The resulting curve can be later used in order to assess the potential economic loss of future events. Although the validation process demonstrated the reliability of the results, a new damage assessment documentation is being recommended and presented. This documentation might improve the quality of the data and the reliability of the curve. The presented research has been developed in the European FP7 project MOVE (Methods for the Improvement of Vulnerability Assessment in Europe).

Loss estimation for landslides in mountain areas - An integrated toolbox for vulnerability assessment and damage documentation

Global environmental change includes changes in a wide range of global scale phenomena, which are expected to affect a number of physical processes, as well as the vulnerability of the communities that will experience their impact. Decision-makers are in need of tools that will enable them to assess the loss of such processes under different future scenarios and to design risk reduction strategies. In this paper, a tool is presented that can be used by a range of end-users (e.g. local authorities, decision makers, etc.) for the assessment of the monetary loss from future landslide events, with a particular focus on torrential processes. The toolbox includes three functions: a) enhancement of the post-event damage data collection process, b) assessment of monetary loss of future events and c) continuous updating and improvement of an existing vulnerability curve by adding data of recent events. All functions of the tool are demonstrated through examples of its application. We developed a tool that will support decision making for disaster risk reduction strategies in mountain areas.The tool incorporates three functions: damage documentation, loss estimation and updating of the vulnerability curve.The tool was applied and tested in South Tyrol, Italy.Future developments (more elements at risks and hazards, uncertainty analysis, mobile applications) have been pointed out.

GIS-based techniques for assessing the vulnerability of buildings to tsunami: current approaches and future steps

Abstract The Papathoma Tsunami Vulnerability Assessment (PTVA) model offers a GIS (geographical information system)-based method of estimating the vulnerability of buildings to a potential tsunami threat. In the absence of fully validated building fragility curves, it provides an effective means of identifying vulnerable buildings/populations and estimating the loss associated with a tsunami. However, the PTVA model is limited by a number of factors, including a poor representation of the tsunami hazard, insufficient field testing/validation, and a data intensive and highly qualitative framework. These limitations significantly reduce its capacity as an accurate and practical tool for end users, such as emergency services and community planners. Presented in this paper is an extensive review of the PTVA methodology and recommendations on how the PTVA model can be improved to address the needs of end users. It is argued that the most recent version of the PTVA model, PTVA-3, offers the best available method for assessing the vulnerability of buildings to tsunamis. As such, the future development of new, and the refinement of existing, GIS-based tsunami vulnerability assessment techniques should consider the PTVA-3 model as the baseline.