Final Study Guide (updated)

Ever since the midterm, we've been looking at hazards posed by wildfire, floods, tropical cyclones, and tsunami, as well as working on group projects.

Please review the following, referring to lectures, readings, and group presentations (or an online search!).

• Of the hazards case-studies since the midterm (wildfires, floods, tropical cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons, and tsunami), which has caused the greatest loss of life in the United States since 1900 (both cumulatively and in terms of single incidents)? This will take some Internet sleuthing.

• Floods

  • Disaster cascades/secondary effects

  • How is the probability of a flood of a given magnitude related to recurrence interval?

  • Riparian/riverine flooding (including flash floods), coastal flooding (tsunami and storm surge flooding), estuarine flooding

  • Flooding due to dam failures (themselves due to poor locational assessment/construction standards, earthquakes, landslides, or stalled storms)

  • Fire and ice: What is the connection between volcanism and flood hazard?

  • Floodplain, alluvium, natural levées, meanders, thalweg, oxbow lakes, deltas and alluvial fans

  • Watershed, catchment, drainage basin

  • Why do streams change course?

  • Driving factors in variations in stream runoff

  • Stream discharge

  • Using the Rational Equation (Q = CIA) to estimate peak discharge

  • Base flow

  • Flood hydrographs -- how they differ in arid versus humid environments and in natural versus built up landscapes

  • How linear regression is used to estimate the discharge of 100 year, 500 year, and 1,000 year floods

  • Extrapolation of a regression line and problems it poses (at least to us statistical purists, if less disturbingly to planners and emergency managers who need a ball-park estimate).

  • FIRMs

  • Why the expression "100 year flood" can be misleading

  • Why do people live on floodplains? Which types of people are most at risk to flood exposure?

  • Structural and non-structural mitigations against flood hazard at the regional societal level and at the personal or household level

  • Difference between flash flood watches and flash flood warnings in the American Southwest

• Wildfire hazard in California

  • What is a Mediterranean climate, and where can it be found on Earth?

  • How do plants cope with the summer drought?

  • The relationship of Mediterranean scrub (chaparral, California sage scrub locally; maquis and garrigue in the Mediterranean; mallee in Australia) with fire

  • As time since the last fire increases, what happens both to the probability and the magnitude of the next one?

  • The points of disagreement between Richard Minnich and Jon Keeley in discussing chaparral fire hazard. Be able to summarize each camp's central arguments -- and the wildfire hazard management strategies each implies.

  • On what sort of policy recommendation could both the Minnich and the Keeley camps agree?

  • How do the geographies of risk exposure to wildfire hazard in coastal California and of societal vulnerability to it differ?

  • What happened to Mike Davis when he started popularizing the social inequities in chaparral/CSS wildfire hazard?

  • How can individual households with the resources and desire to live in pyrogenic vegetation do to mitigate their personal risk ... and reduce the "negative externalities" that risk means for the rest of society? What sorts of structural and non-structural mitigations are available at the individual and household scale? What about at the community scale?

• Tropical cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons

  • Defining features of a tropical cyclone (hurricane, typhoon, or Indian Ocean cyclone)

  • Power source of a tropical cyclone

  • Dangerous side of a hurricane (which side is that in the Northern Hemisphere? What about the Southern Hemisphere?)

  • The several distinct sources of hazard to human life in a hurricane/typhoon

  • Global geographic distribution of tropical cyclone genesis, travel tracks, and coastlines at risk

  • Seasonal distribution of tropical cyclones

  • Saffir-Simpson Scale, with its seven levels (five categories for tropical cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons), based on eyewall air pressure, wind speeds, and storm surge. What was Katrina out in the Gulf of Mexico? When it made landfall? What about Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy?

  • Trends in tropical cyclone mortality in the developed world and the developing countries

  • Trends in economic losses due to tropical cyclones, again contrasting the developed and the developing worlds

  • What are the most common axes of heightened social vulnerability to tropical cyclones?

  • Use of geographical information systems on US hurricane social vulnerability turned up a surprising distribution to this vulnerability. What was that?

  • How might climate change affect hurricane hazard?

  • What sorts of changes in human society are going on that have been both increasing exposure to hurricane hazard and heightening social vulnerability to that exposure?

  • How might a de minimis preference for risk management address increasing tropical cyclone hazard? How might risk managers with a preference for the precautionary principle approach increasing hurricane hazard?

  • Increasing tropical cyclone hazard is a global-scale problem with global-scale societal and physical drivers, but each region and locale has to deal with the consequences. What sorts of regional or municipal scale structural and non-structural mitigations are available to face this growing hazard? What about at the individual or household scale?

• Tsunami

  • What is the basic definition of a tsunami?

  • Why are tsunami considered "shallow-water" waves when they best develop and move through very deep ocean water?

  • How fast would a tsunami move in oceans of varying depths (calculate c as the square root of H [depth] and g [9.8 m/sec] and then convert it to km/hr by multiplying your answer by 3.6)? See if you can figure out how I got this simplified procedure from the more formal one in the notes.

  • Shoaling

  • Buildup of wave height with shoaling

  • Runup height vs. run in distance

  • Near source or near-field tsunami vs. distant source or far-field tsunami

  • Physical process creating tsunami

  • Not all tsunami are seismic sea waves. What other causes can produce these fast-moving, long-wavelength "shallow-water" waves (in deep enough water)?

  • Is the danger over after the predicted big wave hits?

  • What is the weird thing that happens just before a tsunami hits, if the first part of the wave cycle to arrive is a trough instead of a crest? What is that called? How might public education about that save some lives?

  • How do mega-tsunami differ from garden-variety tsunami?

  • Why are you so very likely to drown if you're caught up in a tsunami (besides just getting swept up in fast-moving, turbulent water)?

  • What are common secondary disasters that follow on a tsunami?

  • What sorts of risk assessment activities are going on now in the U.S. to address tsunami possibilities?

  • What are the elements of effective public education programs with respect to tsunami (especially with near source tsunami)?

  • How do DART buoys work in general?

Group presentations
• In which ways were the Oakland fire, Cedar and Station fires, and the Oroville Dam evacuation similar in terms of obstacles to response and managememt?

• Homelessness is a problem that first-responders are in no position to address at the root. What can be done to improve the ability of first-response agencies to "protect and serve" the homeless in the population during planning and preparation for disaster?

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Last revision: 08/14/17