Book Description

In mountainous areas, due to the unique geological and topographical conditions, and along with the impact of global climate change, extreme rainfall events often occur and induce natural disasters such as flash floods, debris flows, landslides, dammed lakes and others. These water-related natural disasters (WRNDs) frequently occur around the world, such as the July 29th 1998 debris flow and landslide dam at Capricorn Creek in Mount Meager Volcanic Complex (southern Canada), the flash flood of 20th August 2018 in Raganello Gorge (southern Italy), and the 2007 summer floods in the United Kingdom. WRNDs are more serious in Southeast Asia particularly in Southwest China, where many places suffer from such disasters in the flood season every year, such as the May 20th 2012 flash flood/debris flow among the hit area of Wenchuan earthquake, the June 24th 2017 Xinmo Catastrophic landslide in Mao county and in 2018 the two sequential landslide-dammed lake events at Jinsha River. These WRNDs not only cause heavy casualties and property losses but also destroy the ecological environment. These WRNDs are not only the concern of government managers and engineers, but also deserve more in-depth study from researchers. Formation and evolution mechanisms of WRNDs are very complicated, and influenced by several aspects, such as geological and topographical conditions, hydrometeorological conditions, geomaterial properties, rainfall history and flow condition, and others. Field and laboratory tests can help us to better understand the related mechanism behind the disasters. Theoretical and empirical models, modeling and numerical methods can provide more reasonable evaluation and forecasting results of WRNDs, but a more in-depth understanding is needed. Furthermore, for the risk control and hazard prevention and mitigation, new equipment and technologies have been developed and have achieved some progress in recent years, but the fast and effective emergency treatments for WRNDs need more attention.