Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2006.

Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2008.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--University of Louisville, 2006. / Title and description from thesis home page (viewed Jan. 30, 2007). Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Vita. "August 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p.78-79).

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the study of flood plains and the flood hazard in England and Wales. Flood plains form an important resource which is only successfully utilised by the reduction of the flood hazard. The extent of the flood hazard in a study area, the problem of assessing flood damage, and the perception of the flood hazard and adjustment to it, are all investigated in order to suggest ways in which floods may be reduced. The flood hazard is a widespread phenomenon affecting most parts of the study area of this dissertation which consists of the Severn, Wye and Usk catchments, and a group of catchments in Glamorgan. Most major settlements extend into flood risk areas, and require flood alleviation programmes. Flood damage assessment is found to be a major problem which adversely affects our ability to optimise flood plain resource use. The assessment of potential flood damages based directly upon actual damage data is found to be impracticable. Instead, standard flood damage information, based upon actual flood damage data, is developed for residences. This allows the computation of potential residential flood damage. The important problem of flood hazard adjustment is considered in a study of the preconditions of flood hazard perception and individual and community adjustment at study sites. The adjustment process is found to be conditioned by flood experience, spatial variations in the hazard, access to information and adjustment evaluation, whilst personality traits do not appear to be directly important. At the community level, unconventional combinations of adjustment are found to be of value, although low levels of public awareness of flood risk pose a serious problem. Flood hazard reduction can be improved in this country by explicit management of flood plains, by improved economic analyses, and by the application of behavioural principles.

Tsunamis are among the most threatening natural hazards that can affect coastal communities and infrastructures. In order to provide useful information for coastal protection, one of my aims in this dissertation is to identify the physical metrics that better represent the damage cause by tsunamis. I approach this problem by carrying out three-dimensional-SPH numerical simulations of solitary waves which allow to track spatial-temporal evolution of physical variables during their breaking. By comparing these evolutions it is possible to visualize the complex hydrodynamic process that occurs during breaking. Results show that the highest danger lies in the environment of the shoreline. However the highest vulnerability of coastal communities and infrastructures lies onshore where they find themselves more exposed to the destructive capacity of extreme tsunami waves. In this regard, the second main goal in this dissertation is to understand how coastal vegetation reduces and modifies the onshore wave inundation. I address this problem by using shallow water equations and Serre-Green-Naghdi equations employed in a set of two-dimensional depth-integrated simulations. Analysis of results indicate the existence of a transition zone located between where runup is not affected at all and where runup suffers the maximum reduction by the vegetation. This infers the requirement of a minimum length of the vegetated barrier in order to achieve the maximum runup reduction under a specific set properties such as barrier location, barrier width, beach slope and/or wave amplitude. Overall we conclude, after intense validation work, that numerical approaches are very convenient tools to analyze difficult wave processes. However it is necessary to be aware of the limitation of each numerical approach. / Ph. D. / Tsunamis are long waves with large wave height that are mainly generated by ocean-based earthquakes. They can also be a consequence of other natural events such as landslides, intense volcanic activities, large storm floods or even asteroid impacts. Coastal communities tend to not consider these low-frequency threats and occupy large coastal areas and so they become very vulnerable to tsunamis. In this dissertation, two main goals are addressed: The first one is to identify where and when the highest dangerousness of the tsunamis occur so coastal habitants can avoid such areas. The second goal focuses on the flooding areas caused by tsunamis where onshore habitants are more vulnerable. We study how a natural element, such as coastal vegetation, affects, reduces and modifies the flooding due to tsunamis. Some design criteria are presented for the coastal vegetation to reduce the flooding to a maximum.

No description available.

Earthquake-induced sliding displacements are commonly used to assess the seismic performance of slopes. These displacements represent the cumulative, downslope movement of a sliding block due to earthquake shaking. While the sliding block model is a simplified representation of the field conditions, the displacements predicted from this model have been shown to be a useful index of seismic performance of slopes. Current evaluation procedures that use sliding block displacements to evaluate the potential for slope instability typically are based on a deterministic approach or a pseudo-probabilistic approach, in which the variabilities in the expected ground motion and predicted displacement are either ignored or not treated rigorously. Thus, there is no concept of the actual hazard (i.e., the annual probability of exceedance) associated with the computed displacement. This dissertation focuses on quantifying the risk for earthquake-induced landslides. The basic approach involves a probabilistic framework for computing the annual rate of exceedance of different levels of sliding displacement for a slope such that a hazard curve for sliding displacement can be developed. The framework incorporates the uncertainties in the prediction of earthquake ground shaking, in the prediction of sliding displacement, and in the assessment of soil properties. The framework considers two procedures that will yield a displacement hazard curve: the scalar hazard approach that utilizes a single ground motion parameter and its associated hazard curve to compute permanent sliding displacements; and a vector hazard approach that predicts displacements based on two (or more) ground motion parameters and the correlation between these parameters. Current predictive models for sliding displacement provide the expected level of displacement as a function of the characteristics of the slope (e.g., geometry, strength, yield acceleration) and the characteristics of earthquake shaking (e.g., peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity). However, current models contain significant aleatory variability such that the range of predicted displacements is large. To reduce the variability in the sliding displacement prediction and to provide models appropriate for the presented probabilistic framework, sliding displacement predictive equations are developed that utilize single and multiple ground motion parameters. The developed framework is implemented to the Mint Canyon 7.5-minute quadrangle in California to generate a map of earthquake-induced landslide hazard. Application of the probabilistic procedure to a 7-1/2 minute quadrangle of California is an important exercise to identify potential difficulties in California Geological Survey’s (CGS) current application for hazard mapping, and for the eventual adoption by CGS and USGS. / text