The development of seismic vulnerability evaluation standards for reinforced concrete buildings in Japan is briefly reviewed. Damage statistics are shown to indicate that severe damage was observed in a relatively small percentage of existing buildings even after damaging earthquakes in the world. Therefore, a simple screening procedure is necessary to identify such vulnerable buildings out of ...

There has been an increase in the occurrence of sudden local flooding of great volume and short duration caused by heavy or excessive rainfall intensity over a small area, which presents the greatest potential danger threat to the natural environment, human life, public health and property, etc. Such flash floods have rapid runoff and debris flow that rises quickly with little or no advance war...

Changing climatic conditions have led to a significant increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall events in the Central Andes of South America. These events are spatially extensive and often result in substantial natural hazards for population, economy and ecology. Here we develop a general framework to predict extreme events by introducing the concept of network divergence on ...

ABSTRACT The method described in Part 1 of this paper was applied to about 30 earthquakes in various parts of the world. The modified single couple hypothesis proposed in Part 1 appears to explain the observations generally better than the double couple hypothesis. Surprisingly consistent pictures of tectonics were obtained in the Mediterranean region and in Japan on the basis of the modified s...

The integrated management of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) diseases play a key role in guaranteeing the high quality and security of cucumber production in greenhouse, moreover, the early warning of cucumber diseases is the chief precondition for IPM (Integrated Pest Management). This paper describes an attempt to develop an early warning system for cucumber diseases in greenhouse. By analysing...