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Presentation Mode : All
Conference Day : 02/08/2021
Time Slot : AM1 08:30 - 10:30
Sections : IG - Interdisciplinary Geosciences










Interdisciplinary Geosciences | Mon-02 Aug




IG01-A001
Trends and Challenges in Radon Hazard and Risk Mapping

Peter BOSSEW#+, Eric PETERMANN
German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz) , Germany


Exposure to indoor radon (Rn) is acknowledged as major cause of lung cancer. Being a health risk, regulation is imposed with the objective to reduce it. Regulation implies action, laid down in Rn Action Plans, on which Rn reduction policy is based. Policy means deciding about action to be taken.The main source of Rn hazard is the geosphere whose locally variable properties control Rn generation and transport in the ground and potentially into buildings. One important tool of decision making are Rn maps, i.e. regionalized displays of hazard and risk due to Rn. Decisions must be reliable (i.e., the chance of wrong decisions low), hence data must be reliable as must be methods to generate maps from the data. Types of maps are hazard or risk level maps, or ones that indicate whether a certain action is advised or necessary. The latter amount to classifying a domain (e.g. a country) into regions in which an action is required or not. Being estimated from data, maps are subject to data and estimation uncertainty of different kinds. Challenges are intrinsic uncertainty of data (observations), the presence of extremes, spatial and temporal variability and estimation from multivariate data (understood as predictors of a hazard, risk or action score, which is the mapped target variable). The European Basic Safety Standards which have to be transposed into National Law by EU Member States motivated research about Rn hazard / risk mapping and its quality assurance relating to issues addressed above. This contribution focuses on the status of mapping the hazard of geogenic Rn as its dominant component in most cases, as well as on topics and challenges of ongoing research.

IG01-A006
Using an Agent-based, Modified SEIR Model with Linear Programming to Optimize Vaccine Allocation

Vena Pearl BONGOLAN1#+, Karina ANG2, Jimuel Jr CELESTE1, Jose Marie Antonio MINOZA2, Joshua Frankie RAYO1, Salvador Eugenio CAOILI3, Romulo DE CASTRO4, Roselle Leah RIVERA1, Jesus Emmaneul SEVILLEJA5
1University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines, 2Department of Computer Science, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines, 3College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines, 4University of San Agustin, Philippines, 5National Center for Mental Health, Philippines


This brings together previous modeling efforts to improve the classic SEIR epidemic model: age-stratification (noting that Covid-19 seems to discriminate against the elderly); a quarantine variable Q which is set to capture different quarantine regimes; and α and  ↋ paramters which are set to capture the effects of human behavior and state of health on protection even after quarantine. The study area is Quezon City, the largest city in the Philippines (by population), and is a hot-spot for Covid-19 in the country. The agent-based model allows all of these parameters to be set individually, for each of the six districts of Quezon City, effectively capturing the geospatial dynamics of transmission in Quezon City. The model was  first calibrated with actual incidence data, then a multi-objective linear programming model was developed to optimize vaccine distribution and applied to the model. Simulations were performed using COVID-19 data from Quezon City and results were analyzed under various scenarios: (1) no vaccination, (2) prioritizing mobile workforce and front liners, (3) prioritizing the elderly and front liners, and (4) prioritizing the poor and front liners. Results were compared in terms of (a) reducing infection rates (b) reducing mortality incidence and c) affording protection in terms of immunity (going towards “herd” immunity). A scenario and sensitivity analysis will be done on a weighted function of all the above-mentioned schemes. Preliminary results show that prioritizing mobile workforce minimizes further infections by 24.14%, which is better than other scenarios. On the other hand, prioritizing the elderly yields the highest protection (439%) for the Quezon City population compared to other scenarios. This could be due to younger people, when contracted the disease, has higher chances of recovery than the elderly. Thus, this leads to reduction of mortality cases. 

IG01-A014
Spatial Spread of Respiratory Droplet (Covid – 19) in an Indoor: Real-time Method (Lattice Boltzmann) Simulation

Ramsundram NARAYANAN#+, Nithya Subhashini T
Kumaraguru College of Technology, India


In this haste world, multifarious disease outbreaks from past few decades are incorporated with climatic change and produce a great impact on people. The majority of communicable respiratory disease like influenza, SARS-Cov, pneumonia, etc are transmitted through nasal droplets which emanate out from an infected person through activities like coughing and sneezing. On examination of these droplets, divulge that these droplets are enfolded with pathogenic organisms and that act as a medium for disease transmission. Low ventilation and high atmospheric temperature make the droplets to suspend in air for prolonged period of time and increase the risk of being affected by these droplets. Thus, the above situation may lead to airborne transmission.            For developing risk models and disease transmission models, the preliminary step is to understand the basic characteristics, modes of transmission, attack rate by pathogens etc. The Wells – Riley model (Riley et al.,1978) is one of the effective models for estimating the risk of airborne disease transmission. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) plays a significant role in simulating a disease transmission model in a realistic way. LBM is a relatively new method and found to be an active research area for the last two decades because of its advantages like highly stable and accurate etc over the other traditional CFD approaches.  In this study, under controlled atmospheric condition we simulated a model that deals with the spatial spread of respiratory droplet (COVID – 19) by using the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). The model obtained from this study serves to be a foundation for better understanding about a degree of transport of infectious droplets and make us to ensure to get aware of physical distancing and to shield our self from these droplets. It also helps us to increase the knowledge towards designing of building in a sustainable way. 

IG01-A007
Economic Exposure Estimation for South Asian Countries

Velautham DAKSIYA1, Edmond LO2#+
1Guy Carpenter, Singapore, 2Nanyang Technological University, Singapore


Data necessary for catastrophe risk and mitigation, e.g. in risk estimations and risk financing, are general poor in terms of availability, accessibility, and quality in Asia and in South East Asia. Building floor area and construction cost are typically needed to estimate building values and losses, which in turns implies high-resolution building data. Developing such high-resolution data over large areas require high computational effort and time. In this study, a framework to estimate economic exposure data (EED) at provincial level is developed via macro-economic data, specifically capital stocks, typically reported nationally by countries, and demonstrated for Thailand. Capital stock (CS) as representing a country’s physical, fixed assets provides a good, ready estimate of asset values exposed to hazards, i.e. an EED. This national CS information is accrued yearly in a country’s national accounts using the Perpetual Information Method (PIM) that accounts for depreciation and retirement of assets to arrive at net CS values. For our EED, the reported net CS needs to be reconverted to a gross CS to provide estimates of the reconstruction cost after a disaster.  Here we derive the Gross CS values from Net CS values as reported in the Penn World Table (www.ggdc.net/pwt), with residential and non-residential exposure values estimated separately. This national level exposure is further distributed into provinces via Gross Regional Domestic Product, and with the non-residential exposure further disaggregated by into commercial, industrial, public, and primary sectors. The final EED values are cross compared with GAR and GEM estimates. The developed framework can be applied to countries with data unavailability and can be further extended to sub-provincial scale.

IG01-A004
Was an Avalanche Swarm Responsible for the Devastation at Mount Everest Base Camp During the April 2015 Nepal Earthquake?

Kent MOORE1#+, John SEMPLE2, Paolo CRISTOFANELLI3, Paolo BONASONI4
1University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, 2University of Toronto, Canada, 3Inter-Agency Standing Committee, Italy, 4National Research Council-Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Italy


An avalanche triggered by an earthquake on April 25, 2015 struck the Mount Everest Base Camp (EBC) resulting in 15 deaths and over 70 injuries. Despite the common occurrence of avalanches in this region little is known about their intensity and the stability of the glaciers that ring the Mount Everest massif. Here we present unique observations from a nearby automatic weather (AWS) in the minutes just after the earthquake.  Several (AWS) were deployed along the Khumbu Valley in Nepal. The site at Kala Patthar (elevation 5613m asl) 3.5 km from EBC and 4 km from the col along the ridge between Pumori and Lingtren was active from 2010 to 2015 and recorded temperature, relative humidity, pressure, solar radiation, wind speed and direction. The sequence of wind direction anomalies indicated multiple air blasts passed the AWS, each associated with a distinct avalanche source suggesting earthquake likely caused a number of distinct avalanches from different source regions along this ridge. Results suggest a swarm of avalanches collectively lead to the death and destruction at EBC suggesting the need for improvement in our understanding of avalanches in the region as well as in our ability to model and forecast such events. 

IG01-A011
Landslide Occurrence and Structural Damages in Barangay Camias, Porac, Pampanga Associated with the 22 April 2019 M 6.1 Central Luzon Earthquake

Chatty Mae GO1#+, Sandra CATANE1, Nathan Azriel VERACRUZ2,1, John Romel FLORA1, Rochelle ENRERA1, Adrian Gelo TIANCHON3
1National Institute of Geological Sciences, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines, 2Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Philippines, 3University of the Philippines Resilience Institute, Philippines


On 22 April 2019, a Mw 6.1 earthquake struck Central Luzon, the epicenter of which was located 18 km N 58° E of Castillejos, Zambales at a depth of 10 km. The earthquake claimed 18 lives, 3 missing, and 256 injured. The province of Pampanga suffered the most, having experienced Intensity V (strong) to Intensity VII (destructive; PEIS). Barangay Camias, Porac is located on a 400-m high ridge in the foothills of Mount Pinatubo, an ancestral domain of the Aeta people. The Aetas are an indigenous group of people in the Philippines whose main livelihood is crop farming. After the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, rehabilitation allowed the construction of paved roads and better accessibility promoted trade and commerce and opened more opportunities for the Aetas. Slowly, they shifted from traditional houses made of light materials to concrete houses. The earthquake triggered several landslides and ground cracks along the steep slopes in Barangay Camias and along the Gumain River. While the landslides did not result in any casualty, ground shaking caused significant damage to concrete structures. Most of the these structures have either collapsed or were severely damaged due to failure of critical structural elements such as beams and columns. Construction materials such as concrete hollow blocks and steel rebars were substandard as the residential houses were built without the guidance of professionals or skilled workers. Even well-built structures like the local elementary school sustained serious structural damage. Topographic and material amplification could have contributed to the strong ground shaking in the area. This highlights the complexity in construction on soft grounds in seismically active regions. Properly constructed habitats for the Aetas would reduce future risk.

IG01-A003
Imaging City's Interior Recognizing Hidden Vulnerabilities: Exploiting a Seismometer

Athanasius CIPTA1#+, Ariska RUDYANTO2, Amalfi OMANG3, Rahayu ROBIANA1, Akhmad SOLIKHIN4, Haunan AFIF1
1Geological Agency of Indonesia, Indonesia, 2Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, Dan Geofisika, Indonesia, 3Badan Geologi, Indonesia, 4Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, Indonesia


Earthquake source and damage are the first things popping up when earthquake occured. However, in some cases, the fault were secretly hidden and just dismantled during a large earthquakes. A single 3-component seismometer offers a simple way yet robust to expose subsurface geological structures. A single station HVSR methode alone has succesfully unearthed the buried faults zone of Palu Koro which is crossing Palu City. The burried faults lie beneath the soil of the Greater Jakarta, the largest economic growth area, such as Cisadane, Kali Bekasi, and Baribis were convincingly imaged. Those faults are crossing densely populated city, This method also offered the answer for the cause of Balaroa megaliquefaction that swallowed thousands houses. The subsurface pond, filled with highly saturated fine-grain sand may be the culprit of this liquefaction. Furthermore, velocity profile inferred from HVSR inversion was capable in illuminating the damage pattern due to the 28th September 2018 Palu Earthquake.

IG01-A008 | Invited
The Devastating Qalhat, Oman Earthquake in the 16th Century

Miklos KAZMER1#+, Vanessa STEINRITZ2, Klaus REICHERTER2, Goesta HOFFMANN3
1Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, 2Institute of Neotectonics and Natural Hazards, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University, Germany, 3Institute for Geosciences, Bonn University, Germany


The Arabian plate is surrounded by seismically active margins. The plate interior is mostly free from earthquakes, at least during the instrumentally recorded period, starting in 1900. We describe archaeological and historical evidence for two destructive earthquakes in the plate interior. The Medieval town of Qalhat is a ruin field next to modern Qalhat town in the easternmost part of Oman. The area is 1 km in diameter, occupying 35 hectares by hundreds of heaps of undidentified ruins. Each heap was a building, separated by an irregular network of former streets. Collapsed dome of a mausoleum, the only building still standing, collapsed columns, tilted, folded and fractured walls, deformed floors are described from the Friday mosque. Various repair features indicate that a first calamity was survived by the population, and damage was repaired. However, the second event brought total destruction to the mosque and all buildings of the city, never to be restored. Intensity VII is assigned to the first event in 1497, while intensity IX is assigned to the second earthquake, which occurred between 1570 and 1592. The city never recovered from the latter; it has been a field of ruins ever since. Towns of Tiwi and Qurayat along a 100 km long segment of the coast were also destroyed. Displacement along the nearby Qalhat normal fault is the prime causative fault for the second earthquake. As both sets of faults intersect the coastline, both might have caused landslide and tsunami.

IG03-A002
Regional Deterministic Tsunami Hazard Analysis Model for the Philippines

Jun BONITA1,2#+, Anawat SUPPASRI3, Fumihiko IMAMURA3
1Tsunami Engineering Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan, 2Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Department of Science and Technology, Philippines, 3Tohoku University, Japan


The Philippine archipelago is a tectonically sophisticated and seismically active region. Probabilistic seismic (ground-motion) hazard assessment is currently made available on a national scale. Our goal is to develop the first nationally consistent and comprehensive probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA) for the Philippines. Every earthquake-induced tsunami hazard assessments are highly dependent on the reliability of the earthquake rupture scenarios, numerical computation parameters, and scaling laws. In this study, we combine the subduction interface's seismicity and geological characteristics to infer a series of fault rupture scenarios. The goal is to develop source models in subduction zones in and around the Philippines, such as the Manila trench, Negro's trench, Sulu trench, Cotabato trench, east Luzon trough, and the Philippine trench for PTHA study. We reviewed seismicity data and focal mechanisms from combinations of Global Centroid Moment Tensor (CMT) solutions and regional partial daily earthquake PDE from the local seismic network together with the Slab2.0 model to update rapture segmentation. The maximum credible magnitude, fault width, and slip amount is then determined using Papazachos et al. (2004). Then we produced a set of parameters of these earthquake sources as input data to tsunami hazard modeling using the TUNAMI- N2, a nonlinear shallow water propagation model. A deterministic tsunami hazard assessment is carried out to determine the relative hazard level in populated coastal cities. The results of which will be useful for further probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA) studies. These modeled scenarios could also contribute to further improved inputs of the tsunami database used for tsunami warnings.

IG03-A010
Coastal Flooding and Erosion Risks for the Laurentian Great Lakes

Vincent POITRAS#+, Laxmi SUSHAMA, Luis DUARTE
McGill University, Canada


Climate-resiliency of coastal communities and infrastructure systems for the Laurentian Great Lakes region is addressed in this study. Reduced lake ice cover in future climate, combined with increased wind speeds, can lead to more energetic waves that can be potentially damaging for infrastructure systems. This study uses the WAVEWATCH III (WW3) model, which is the third generation wave model developed by NOAA/NCEP, to simulate current (1991-2020) and future (2041-2070; 2071-2100) wave characteristics. Comparison of the WWW3 simulation, driven by the ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) wind and sea ice data, with available observational data from the NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) is performed first to assess model’s ability is capturing wave characteristics in current climate. WW3 simulations for the current and future periods, driven by the ice and wind fields from climate change simulations performed with the limited area version of the Global Environmental Multi-scale model (GEM), which in turn is driven by the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2), are then used to assess projected changes to significant wave height and dominant wave directions. These are then used to assess coastal flooding and erosion risks for the Laurentian Great Lakes for selected emission scenarios. The above and other related analysis will be presented in this paper.

IG05-A004
A Case Study of Monitoring Slope Stability by an Iot Cloud-based System

Huai-Houh HSU1#+, Jui-Ting LEE2, Chang-Cheng HSIEH3, Chieh-Yu CHEN4, Yen-Chi HUANG1
1National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 2Rui-Cheng Innovation and Technology Co Ltd, Taiwan, 3Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 4Engineering Management Division, Education Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government, Kaohsiung, Taiwan


The Singjhong elementary school locates at the confluence of the Laonong River with its Putou tributary, where shallow landslide events have been observed in 2016 and 2017. During the typhoon Meranti and Megi, 2016, the Putou River speeded up the erosion process. In 2017, the 0601 extremely heavy rain event triggered a landslide of the Putou River right beneath the south campus corner. This event threatened the safety of children's activity. Lots of projects were undertaken to mitigate the risk. For monitoring slope stability, an IoT cloud-based system was accordingly established. This system is composed of MEMS-based tiltmeters, the LoRa router, and the cloud web server. It has the advantages of low energy consumption, long-distance signal transmission, and less environmental disturbance. The output readings of tiltmeters are transmitted to the LoRa router and connect to the internet to demonstrate data in the slope monitoring website. The system sends a warning message to the school’s community while tiltmeter readings reach a warning value. In this study, an early warning event is presented and discussed. A 20m inclinometer casing near the Laonong River is observed slow slope movements by a long-term measurement. The tiltmeter, which is installed at the slope retaining wall, continuously monitors the inclination variation of the wall. Because the slope is gradually eroded by the Laonong River, a warning code is finally triggered and took risk mitigation action. This paper introduces the IoT monitoring system, presents measured data, demonstrates and discusses the erosion process of the Singjhong case.

IG24-A011
Development and Evaluation of Low-cost PM2.5 Sensing Devices to Assess Residents’ Exposure Levels in the Asian Community

Wen-Cheng Vincent WANG#+, Shih-Chun Candice LUNG, Chun-Hu LIU, Tzu-Yao Julia WEN, Shu-Chuan HU
Academia Sinica, Taiwan


PM2.5 has been known to be carcinogenic to humans. Annual mean levels reached 10 times higher than the recommended threshold of WHO in certain Asian areas. Asian residential communities are usually dotted with various pollution sources, such as restaurants and home factories, resulting in higher intra-urban variability than western communities. Thus, it is important to characterize pollution spatial variability in order to assess accurately residents’ exposures. The objectives of this study are to evaluate low-cost PM2.5 sensing devices to assess exposure levels in high spatiotemporal resolution in the Asian community. In our work, we develop a PM2.5 sensing device, called AS-LUNG, short for Academia Sinica-Lung (the organ affected by air pollutants). AS-LUNG includes sensors for PM2.5 (Plantower 3003), air temperature, and relative humidity (RH%). Real-time data can be transmitted through optional WIFI or GSM system back to the cloud system and be simultaneously stored in the back-up SD-card. AS-LUNG-O (the outdoor version) equipped with water-proof housing to protect the mainboard and sensors from harsh weather. Optional power supply systems allow AS-LUNG-O to connect solar panels or domestic power supply. PM2.5 readings of AS-LUNG-O were compared to the results of the side-by-side collocated observations of GRIMM in the laboratory and in field tests. For laboratory evaluation, operation conditions of the chamber range from 1-472 μg/m3 (18.1-34.9°C and 56.3-97.4%). For In-field evaluation, a 72-hour-monitoring was conducted under the conditions of 3.9-30.1 μg/m3, 25.9-40.9°C, and 43.4-93.8%. High PM2.5 levels were observed based on AS-LUNG-O sensing devices when traditional activities began. Our results indicate that these low-cost devices can be widely used to assess residents’ exposure levels on the community scale and to fill the data gap from sparse official monitoring networks.

IG24-A016
A New View on Compound Hazard of Typhoon in China

Gregor C. LECKEBUSCH#+, Kelvin NG
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom


An assessment of the compound hazard – extreme wind and extreme precipitation, of tropical cyclones (TCs) is of importance due to the enormous potential impact of TCs to the economic development and societal welfare of coastal regions.  In this presentation, we introduce a new approach to assess TC compound meteorological hazard risk in terms of potential economic loss for mainland China.  The new approach consists of two components.  The first component is to construct a physically consistent TC event set by applying an objective, computationally efficient TC tracking algorithm, WiTRACK, to the THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble (TIGGE) dataset.  This TC event set consist of more than 7,000 years of physical TCs with high damage potential.  The second component is to apply a new metric, TC compound meteorological hazard risk index (CMRI) to the TC event set.  CMRI considers TC-related extreme wind and extreme precipitation which are identified based on an impact-oriented tracking algorithm.  CMRI is closely linked to the normalised economic loss in China between 1979-2014.  We also present preliminary results of the application of CMRI in estimating the return period of the TC-related potential economic loss in mainland China. 

IG24-A017
The Impact of 2 and 3℃ Global Warming on Heat Extremes and Rice Cultivation Over South Korea with Cordex-ea2 Projection

Sera JO1#+, Kyo-Moon SHIM1, Jina HUR1, Yongseok KIM1, Mingu KANG1, Wonjun CHOI1, Joong-Bae AHN2
1National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Korea, South, 2Pusan National University, Korea, South


The changes of agro-climate and heat extremes, and their impact on rice cultivation are assessed over South Korea in the context of 2 and 3℃ global warming levels (GWL) compared to pre-industrial levels, with ensemble regional climate model projection following the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment–East Asia (CORDEX-EA) phase 2 protocols. It is found that the mean temperature increase under global warming has not only positive effects such as the extension of vegetable and crop periods and the widening of the cultivatable regions but also negative effects due to the shortening of the reproductive growth period. On the other hand, extreme heat changes in the future clearly show a negative effect on rice cultivation via the increase of hot days during heat-sensitive stages (27.16% under 2 ℃ GWL, 54.59% under 3 ℃ GWL) among rice phenology which determines the rice yield in tandem with rice flowering, ripening, and sterility problems. The major type of heat extreme is dominated by nationwide warm anomalies covering entire S. Korea, and the proportion of this type is projected to increase from 35.8% to 49.5% (57.4%) under 2 ℃ (3 ℃) GWL in association with the thermal expansion of atmosphere which links to the favorable environment for occurring barotropic anti-cyclonic system.  This study was carried out with the support of the Research Program for Agricultural Science and Technology Development (Project No. PJ01493701), the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, and produced with the supercomputer resource and consultation with technical support of Korean Meteorological Administration’s supercomputer management division. The CORDEX-EA phase 2 database can be downloaded from the ESGF node (https://esg-dn1.nsc.liu.se/search/cordex/).

IG24-A038
Sensitivity of Atmospheric and Land Surface Processes on the Snow-related Parameters in a Land Surface Model: Implications for Regional Climate Projections

Sujeong LIM1+, Seon Ki PARK1#, Claudio CASSARDO2
1Ewha Womans University, Korea, South, 2University of Turin, Italy


Assessment of regional climate risk strongly depends on the reliability of regional climate model outputs. Among the surface conditions in a regional climate model, snow has one of the largest spatial and temporal variations as well as various physical properties from the aging processes. Accurate snow cover simulation is important in climate prediction because it modifies the absorption of solar radiation at the land-atmosphere interface. This process leads to a change in surface albedo, which in turn affects surface temperature and consequently the energy budgets of the lower atmosphere. Furthermore, uncertainty in snow process influences the water budgets via snow density and mass. In this study, we investigate sensitivities of near-surface atmospheric conditions and land surface process to various snow-related parameters by conducting sensitivity experiments using the Noah Land Surface Model (Noah LSM) coupled to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The Noah LSM uses a single-layer representation of the snow processes to simulate the snow cover fraction, albedo, and depth. Based on the sensitivity experiments, we suggest the snow-related parameters that need to be optimized for improving future climate prediction: we also discuss implications of snow-related sensitivity for regional climate projections.

IG24-A039
Framework for Climate-related Risks to Infrastructure in Chinese Cities, Understanding Current and Future Risks

Maria SUNYER#+, Louise PARRY, Oliver PRITCHARD, Harriet OBRIEN, Ben SMITH, Laura FROST, Astrid KAGAN
Arup, United Kingdom


Climate resilient infrastructure is essential for the safety, wellbeing, sustainability and economic prosperity of cities. An understanding of current and future climate risks is an essential consideration for the planning, design, delivery and management of new and existing resilient infrastructure systems. There is a growing need for tools which help address all components of risk and bridge the gap between climate science, resilience practitioners and infrastructure owners. The Climate Risk Infrastructure Assessment Tool developed within the Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China) allows the user to assess all components of risk and aims bridge the gap between climate science and decision makers in infrastructure sectors. The tool has been developed to help planners and policy-makers understand how climate change may impact a city’s infrastructure systems. CSSP China seeks to bring together climate practitioners in China and the UK, and to forge links between climate scientists and industry practitioners to develop practical tools that translate the science into valuable insights for policymaking, planning and design. The development of this tools builds on earlier work carried out with the Shanghai Met Service and the British Embassy in Beijing to develop a qualitative tool to guide the assessment of climate risks for infrastructure.The tool guides the user through a semi-quantitative climate risk assessment for a section of an infrastructure system. Risk is estimated as a combination of event likelihood and impact. At present it uses ensemble data from global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) to estimate future climate change projections and provide insight on the current and future likelihood of weather events. For key risks, guidance on implementing appropriate adaptation measures is provided to support planners and policy-makers to consider what action is needed.

IG24-A023
Cretaceous-Cenozoic Landscape Evolution of the Southern East Asia: Implications for the Mechanism of the Asian Monsoon

Yonghui QIN1+, Yuntao TIAN2#, Zengjie ZHANG3, Zhaokun YAN4, Dongxu CHEN5, Xilin SUN6, Peizhen ZHANG6
1The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, 2School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, 3 School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, 4East China University of Technology, Nanchang, China, 5National Natural Science Foundation of China, Hunan Earthquake Agency, China, 6Sun Yat-sen University, China


The modern East Asia is dominated by the Asia monsoon system, which brings abundant summer rainfall. The formation of the Asia monsoon resulted from Cenozoic continental landscape evolution of the Asian continent, underpinned by the tectonic events in Asian continental margins. Therefore, reconstructing the Mesozoic-Cenozoic landscape evolution of the East Asia provides opportunity to improve our understanding in terms of the mechanism for the monsoon formation and the interactions among changes in climate, landscape and tectonics. A widely accepted landscape evolution model for the East Asia suggested that Cretaceous-Paleogene landscape was west-tilting, characterized by extensive high coastal mountains in the east and relatively low terrains in the west. Here we testify this model by reconstructing the paleodrainage evolution that is sensitive to large-scale topographic adjustment. Our paleodrainage reconstructions, using paleocurrent and zircon U-Pb analyses, focus on four contiguous sedimentary basins (namely Yulin, Shiwandashan, Nanning, and Baise), extending for ~500 km in the South China Block. Results show that the paleodrainages feeding the basins evolved from Cretaceous west-flowing, via Paleogene bidirectional, to Late Oligocene modern-like east-flowing, suggesting the landscape evolved from Cretaceous west-tilting, via a Paleogene transitional state, to Late Oligocene-present east-tilting. These reconstructions are consistent with recent paleo-elevation studies, suggesting Eocene surface uplift of the southeast Tibetan Plateau. We further suggest that the newly reconstructed Paleogene transitional landscape, with highlands in both the southeast Tibetan Plateau and eastern coastal continental margin, blocked the landward import of moisture from the Pacific and Indian Oceans, impeding the formation of the Asian monsoons. Late Oligocene lowering of the coastal mountains and continued uplift of the Tibetan Plateau gave rise to the formation of the Asian monsoon. We highlights the importance of elevation decay of the eastern continental margin, apart from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, in forming the East Asian monsoon.

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Principle of Parsimony, Scales, and Fake Sciences

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