Weather events causing natural disasters

Intense storms with high-intensity, long-duration rainfall have large potential to trigger flood and landslide events, resulting in casualties and property damage across the world. In recent years, through the availability of remotely sensed precipitation datasets, it has become possible to conduct flood and landslide trigger analyses in areas with scarce in-situ measurements. However, the suitability and applicability of remotely sensed extreme precipitation events in local to regional scale hazard studies is still under research.

In this presentation the focus is on the importance of extreme weather information for understanding and predicting hazardous events. In many areas, there are no, or at best irregular, in-situ measurements available. At the same time, the knowledge that satellites have difficulties to estimate daily extremes might hamper the usability of these remotely sensed datasets. However, one way or the other a hazard assessment needs an analysis of the triggering mechanism in order to be able to say anything on the predictability of the event. This challenge is addressed within various recent MSc research topics of Natural Hazards, Risk and Engineering specialization track.

Speakers: Janneke Ettema, Victor Jetten (ITC, University of Twente)