Several accidental events that occurred in chemical and process plants in the last decades evidenced that floods may cause severe damages to process plants and storage sites, resulting in multiple and extended releases of hazardous substances. Moreover, besides conventional release scenarios (fires, explosions and toxic clouds), floods may cause two further critical events: significant environm...

Alarm floods have always been serious hazards in industrial process monitoring since they overwhelm operators with large amount of alarm messages raised within a short period of time. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to find an optimal alignment of multiple alarm flood sequences so that based on this alignment an alarm sequence pattern can be easily found. The pattern could reveal the cor...

Floods trigger cascades of physical processes that alter streams and riparian zones of mountain landscapes, yet affected species are resilient Recent flooding in the Pacific Northwest vividly illustrates the complexity of watershed and ecosystem responses to floods, especially in steep forest landscapes. Flooding involves a sequence of interactions that begins with climatic drivers. These drive...

Subglacial floods (jökulhlaups) are well documented as occurring beneath present day glaciers and ice caps. In addition, it is known that massive floods have occurred from ice-dammed lakes proximal to the Laurentide ice sheet during the last ice age, and it has been suggested that at least one such flood below the waning ice sheet was responsible for a dramatic cooling event some 8000 years ago...

Development of cities and villages, agricultural farms and industrial regions in abutment and/or in the course of streams and rivers or in prone flood lands has been caused more notations in hydrology problems and city planning topics. In order to protection of cities against of flood damages, embankment construction is a desired and scientific method. The cities that located in arid zones may ...

Perceptions of flash floods and landslides were analyzed in four communities of the Bavarian Alps using the mental model approach. Thirty-eight qualitative interviews, two telephone surveys with 600 respondents, and two onsite interviews (74/95 respondents) were conducted. Mental models concerning flash floods are much better developed than those for landslides because the key physical processe...

Sub-Sahara Africa is considered to be most vulnerable to climate variability including flooding. The frequency and severity of floods in Northern Ghana over the last decade has increased considerably. Through qualitative modelling the paper explores the impact of floods on natural resource dependent communities in Northern Ghana. Simplified causal loop diagrams are used to conceptualise flood-i...

Based on a brief account of 1,000 years of river floods and flood management in the Dutch Rhine delta, it is argued that vulnerability to river floods depends on the complex interaction of economics, institutions, politics and, to a limited extent, climate. Response functions and thresholds for climate change impacts should take this complexity into account rather than assuming society to be co...

Exposure to abnormal floods is believed to have negative shortand long-term consequences for welfare and health in poor countries, and such impacts are likely to grow worse with continued anthropogenic climate change. However, two common proxies for flood exposure, self-reported exposure and rainfall, are problematic. This paper describes a method for constructing objective measures of flood ex...