Financial Management of Flood Risk


Book Description

Disasters present a broad range of human, social, financial, economic and environmental impacts, with potentially long-lasting effects. This report applies the lessons from the OECD’s analysis of disaster risk financing practices and its risk guidance to the specific case of floods.




Land Use Management in Disaster Risk Reduction


Book Description

This book provides a wide range of studies on methods of assessing natural disaster risks and reducing those risks in the context of land use. A major benefit of the book is that it presents extensive research and practices from interdisciplinary perspectives through case studies of land use management against various natural disasters. The natural hazards include earthquakes, tsunami, floods, and other disasters, with case studies ranging from urban areas to areas with natural environments such as mountains, coasts, and river systems. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, this work illustrates how interactions between natural and human environments create natural disasters, and how disaster risks can be managed or reduced through methods related to land use. This book also covers a variety of challenges in land use management with sample cases from Asia as well as the United States and Europe. The main purpose is to provide greater insight into studies of natural disaster risks from the perspective of land use and the possibility of non-engineering methods to reduce those risks. This goal can be achieved through management of land use against various natural hazards in diverse environments.




Tying Flood Insurance to Flood Risk for Low-Lying Structures in the Floodplain


Book Description

Floods take a heavy toll on society, costing lives, damaging buildings and property, disrupting livelihoods, and sometimes necessitating federal disaster relief, which has risen to record levels in recent years. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 to reduce the flood risk to individuals and their reliance on federal disaster relief by making federal flood insurance available to residents and businesses if their community adopted floodplain management ordinances and minimum standards for new construction in flood prone areas. Insurance rates for structures built after a flood plain map was adopted by the community were intended to reflect the actual risk of flooding, taking into account the likelihood of inundation, the elevation of the structure, and the relationship of inundation to damage to the structure. Today, rates are subsidized for one-fifth of the NFIP's 5.5 million policies. Most of these structures are negatively elevated, that is, the elevation of the lowest floor is lower than the NFIP construction standard. Compared to structures built above the base flood elevation, negatively elevated structures are more likely to incur a loss because they are inundated more frequently, and the depths and durations of inundation are greater. Tying Flood Insurance to Flood Risk for Low-Lying Structures in the Floodplain studies the pricing of negatively elevated structures in the NFIP. This report review current NFIP methods for calculating risk-based premiums for these structures, including risk analysis, flood maps, and engineering data. The report then evaluates alternative approaches for calculating risk-based premiums and discusses engineering hydrologic and property assessment data needs to implement full risk-based premiums. The findings and conclusions of this report will help to improve the accuracy and precision of loss estimates for negatively elevated structures, which in turn will increase the credibility, fairness, and transparency of premiums for policyholders.




Asian Law in Disasters


Book Description

This book is a critical analysis of several of the most disaster-prone regions in Asia. Its unique focus is on the legal issues in the phase of disaster recovery, the most lengthy and difficult stage of disaster response that follows the conclusion of initial emergency stage of humanitarian aid. In the stage of disaster recovery, the law decides the fate of reconstruction for the individual houses and livelihoods of the disaster-affected people and sets the limit of governmental support for them during the lengthy period of suspension of normal living until full recovery is obtained. Researchers who were participant-observers in the difficult recovery phase after the mega-disasters in Asia analyse the reality of the functions of law which often hinder, rather than foster, efforts to restore disaster victims’ lives. The book collects research conducted with an emphasis on empirical approaches to legal sociology, including direct interviews with people affected by the disaster. It offers a holistic approach beyond the traditional sectionalism of legal studies by starting with a historical review and incorporating both spheres of public law and private law, in order to obtain a new perspective that can concurrently achieve disaster risk reductions and human-centered recoveries. With particular emphasis on the unexplored area of law in the post-disaster recovery phase, this book will attract the attention of students and scholars of disaster studies, legal studies, Asian studies, as well as those who work in the practice of disaster management.







Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis


Book Description

This survey covers techniques and approaches that promise to directly enable opinion-oriented information-seeking systems.




Tailored Organic-Inorganic Materials


Book Description

This book explores the limitless ability to design new materials by layering clay materials within organic compounds. Assembly, properties, characterization, and current and potential applications are offered to inspire the development of novel materials. Coincides with the government's Materials Genome Initiative, to inspire the development of green, sustainable, robust materials that lead to efficient use of limited resources Contains a thorough introductory and chemical foundation before delving into techniques, characterization, and properties of these materials Applications in biocatalysis, drug delivery, and energy storage and recovery are discussed Presents a case for an often overlooked hybrid material: organic-clay materials







Domestic intelligence programs


Book Description




Adaptive Thermal Comfort: Principles and Practice


Book Description

The fundamental function of buildings is to provide safe and healthy shelter. For the fortunate they also provide comfort and delight. In the twentieth century comfort became a 'product' produced by machines and run on cheap energy. In a world where fossil fuels are becoming ever scarcer and more expensive, and the climate more extreme, the challenge of designing comfortable buildings today requires a new approach. This timely book is the first in a trilogy from leaders in the field which will provide just that. It explains, in a clear and comprehensible manner, how we stay comfortable by using our bodies, minds, buildings and their systems to adapt to indoor and outdoor conditions which change with the weather and the climate. The book is in two sections. The first introduces the principles on which the theory of adaptive thermal comfort is based. The second explains how to use field studies to measure thermal comfort in practice and to analyze the data gathered. Architects have gradually passed responsibility for building performance to service engineers who are largely trained to see comfort as the ‘product’, designed using simplistic comfort models. The result has contributed to a shift to buildings that use ever more energy. A growing international consensus now calls for low-energy buildings. This means designers must first produce robust, passive structures that provide occupants with many opportunities to make changes to suit their environmental needs. Ventilation using free, natural energy should be preferred and mechanical conditioning only used when the climate demands it. This book outlines the theory of adaptive thermal comfort that is essential to understand and inform such building designs. This book should be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners of architecture, building engineering and management – for all who have a role in producing, and occupying, twenty-first century adaptive, low-carbon, comfortable buildings.