Sustainable Management of Natural Hazards in the Region of South-East Asia and South Asia

Authors

M. H. Faber, A. Kos, B. Becker, M. Kaufmann, P. Stamp, K. Seeland, A. Grün, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
ETH, Zurich, Switzerland.
S.L. Ranamukhaarachchi, G.P. Shivakoti, L. Samarakoon, O. Shipin, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand
L. Rego, Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), Thailand.

Abstract

Following the devastating consequences of the Banda Aceh with the Earthquake followed by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004, focus has been directed towards the high vulnerability and low robustness of the affected societies, infrastructure and natural resources in regard to natural hazards. A proposal for an ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) lead project in partnership with AIT (the Asian Institute of Technology) and ADPC (the Asian Disaster Prevention Centre) is presented. The aim of the project is on a medium to long term to improve the basis for sustainable management of risk due to natural hazards through improved decision support tools, improved understanding of the risks, knowledge dissemination and education. A risk management framework is proposed considering three distinct decision situations namely, before, during and after the event of a natural hazard. Use of the risk management framework is envisaged to provide decision support for decision makers at international, national, regional as well as municipal levels. Furthermore the decision support tool may also greatly enhance education and training as it facilitates that the consequences of various risk management strategies may be quantified and compared.

The focus of the project is directed towards two different exposure conditions, namely hazard conditions relevant for coastal regions and conditions relevant for inland regions. The first mentioned regions are typically exposed to more rapidly evolving event of natural hazards such as tsunamis and floods whereas the inland regions may be more exposed to e.g. climatic changes and short sighted land use.

The proposed risk assessment framework takes basis in a newly developed approach to risk assessment where a given system such as e.g. a larger geographical region is assessed by consideration of the exposure (hazard) to the system, the vulnerability (immediate damage due to a hazard) of the system and the robustness (indirect and/or delayed consequences due to the immediate damage) of the system. The concept of risk indicators in conjunction with Bayesian Probabilistic Networks (BPN's) is applied for the assessment of risks and for the optimization of strategies to risk management. The risk indicators are descriptors characterizing a given geographical area in regard to the prevailing exposure condition, vulnerability and robustness. Typical indicators are related to e.g. geographical conditions, population density, distance to various potential sources of natural hazards, type of buildings, existence of life-line facilities of various sorts, soil conditions and land utilization. To facilitate the management of the significant amount of data required for the risk management it is envisaged to develop a GIS based platform for the decision support tool. This will also greatly enhance the potential of the developed tool for educational purposes. Of utmost importance for the proposed framework is to ensure that especially the interaction between immediate direct damages due to natural hazards and indirect consequences to the affected societies are taken properly into account. This includes the longer term effects of damages to agricultural assets, production facilities and lifeline systems as included in the modelling of the robustness. Management of natural hazards has to be seen in the light of this interaction and thus calls for the strategic planning of land use as one of the most significant factors in sustainable risk management.

Published in/by

International Symposium "Disaster Reduction on Coasts", Melbourne, Australia, November 14-16, 2005.