The Disaster Risk & Resilience Analytics and Solutions (D-RAS) KSB presents

Princeton’s Flood and Drought Monitors

for Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean

Wednesday, June 15, 2016  |  12:30 – 2:00 PM  |  Room I 6-170

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    Description:   

Droughts can have serious impacts on agriculture (particularly in developing countries with little irrigation capacity), electricity generation, water resources for domestic consumption, and ecosystems health. These can lead to severe famines, loss of lives, and mass migration. Floods, can also cause loss of lives, damage to infrastructure, and increase the risk of water-borne diseases. Thus, understanding current hydrometeorological conditions and being able to forecast these extremes with as much lead time as possible is critical for stakeholders to be able to able to prepare and act. However, developing countries often have poor climatic services due to lack of infrastructure (including a lack of monitoring hydrometeorological stations), technical expertise, and investments. With the help of satellites, and climate and hydrological models, however, we have been able to expand our study of droughts and floods to these regions. The Terrestrial Hydrology Research Group at Princeton University has developed the Flood and Drought Monitors for Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (http://stream.princeton.edu), which include monitoring of current conditions, forecasts up to three months, as well as data records back to 1948. This last characteristic is another important feature, given that users can easily access and download the Monitors’ data, allowing them to carry out further analysis.

Chair:

Niels B. Holm-Nielsen, Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist, GSURR

Presenter:

Julio Herrera-Estrada, Land Surface Hydrology Research Group, Princeton University

Discussant:

Abigail Baca, Infrastructure Specialist, GSURR

Julio Herrera-Estrada is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources at Princeton University, also pursuing a graduate certificate in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses on the physical mechanisms that control the evolution of droughts, on how the characteristics of these extreme events might be affected by climate change, and on quantifying their impacts on the Water-Energy Nexus. Julio received his B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University in 2012 and an M.A. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University in 2014. He was born in Mexico City, Mexico where he lived prior to moving the United States for college in 2008.

Please find attached the presentation.

Thanks!

Brought to you by the Disaster Risk Management Analytics and Solutions (D-RAS) KSB &
the Culture, Heritage, and Sustainable Development KSB

Enhancing Resilience of Cultural Heritage

Saving Unique Treasures, Contributing to Local Economies

Wednesday, December 2, 2015 || 12:30 - 2:00 pm || Room I 7-022

Description: 

How do we enhance resilience of delicate cultural heritage assets that attract visitors to the cities we work with?  This BBL will present some innovative and compelling solutions applied to heritage in urban areas prone to natural disasters.  A team of experts from the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), University of Calabria, and Italian National Agency for New Technologies (ENEA) will give us the unique opportunity of learning about their groundbreaking solutions and their implications for local economies.

Solution 1: Anti-Seismic Basements. This solution is about a state-of-the-art device to reduce vulnerability of heritage artefacts to seismic hazards, designed to absorb vibrations and shocks.  The cases of the Riace Bronzes and Michelangelo’s David will be presented.  These statues are kept in highly seismic urban areas and are prime assets to attract visitors to the cities in which they are located.

Solution 2: Space Observation and 3D Web.  An application of advanced monitoring of cultural heritage will be presented.  Building on know-how developed for space observation, blended with 3D modelling, this solution is the result of a multiyear project called Massimo and aims at putting in place a monitoring system that integrates real time and remote sensing data (proximal, airborne, and satellites) with the objective of making heritage sites safer for visitors. 

Chair:

Catalina Marulanda, Lead Urban Specialist and Acting Practice Manager, GSURR

Presenters:

Dr. Maria Fabrizia Buongiorno is Director of Technology Research and Head of Space Observation Infrastructure at the National Earthquake Center, Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). Her research interests include environmental remote sensing and spectral analysis, using both in situ and space retrieved measurements, development of new technologies and sensors to investigate terrestrial surface and atmosphere, with particular regard to the volcanic areas, and unmanned airborne vehicles for volcanic and seismic emergencies. She has been coordinator of national and international research projects founded by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, Italian Space Agency, European Space Agency and European Commission, including the recent PON Massimo project.

Dr. Gerardo De Canio is Head of the Sustainable Innovation Technology Laboratory at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies (ENEA). 

His research fields include earthquake protection of heritage assets, analysis of movable and semi-movable heritage assets, dynamic characterization and experimental verification of new technologies and materials for seismic protection of delicate instruments and control systems for strategic infrastructures and heritage, design of anti-seismic basements for high vulnerable statues, structural dynamics, shaking table tests, combined climatic and vibration tests, EMC tests, qualification of systems and components for industrial applications, railway transport, aerospace, and civil engineering.

Dr. Fawzi Doumaz is Senior Researcher and manager of the Cultural Heritage Laboratory at the National Earthquake Center of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). His main research fields include software development in GIS environment for visualizing seismicity in real time, creation of hardware infrastructures for centralized management of geospatial data, design and WebGIS for interactive navigation and distribution of scientific data, mapping software for mobile devices to disseminate near real time synchronized information, synchronized multi-discplinari data acquisition and volcanological survey, geophysical data acquisition software in Antarctic environments. He is responsible for the development of the Database of Italian Volcanoes Prototype and of a web interface for an early warning alert for Stromboli volcano, called Paroxysm project.

The KSBs on Disaster Risk Management Analytics and Solutions (D-RAS) & Culture, Heritage, and Sustainable Development present:

Strengthening of Historic Buildings: Increasing Resilience or Losing Value

Wednesday, November 11, 2015 || 12:30 - 2:00 pm || Room I 2-220

Description: 

In the aftermath of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, governments often find they do not have adequate technical, legal, or financial tools needed to implement a robust reconstruction program. More than this, they may even lack the necessary knowledge. This is particularly true of cultural assets such as historical buildings. For TTLs and other stakeholders, it also raises important questions such as:

• Which parts of physical buildings hold cultural/historical/aesthetic value, should those be preserved/repaired/restored, and critically, how?
• Should authenticity always be the main concern?
• When considering historic buildings, is the pace of the reconstruction just as important as the modality?

  Thirty years after the recommendations for repairing and strengthening historic buildings were presented at International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) General Assembly, this timely BBL evaluates the approach to "reconstruction" of historic buildings with reference to recent destructive seismic events worldwide, where historic buildings have been seriously affected. Specifically the BBL addresses:

• the traditional and more innovative procedures used for the reconstruction of historical buildings and monuments,
• the question of whether there is a common understanding between the conservation and the seismic engineering community, and
• whether and how lessons from past failures are informing new strengthening strategies.

We invite you to join us to find these answers that also have direct implications for the Building Back Better approach undertaken by the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) community and the World Bank, and more broadly, for cultural tourism and the empowerment of local communities.

Chair:

Catalina Marulanda, Lead Urban Specialist and Acting Practice Manager, GSURR

Presenter:

1. Prof. Dina D’Ayala, Department of Civil Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London

Discussant:

Ahmed Eiweida, Lead Urban Specialist, GSURR

Professor Dina D'Ayala is Head of Civil Engineering and Co-director of the EPICentre research centre.  She is a structural engineer with a humanities background and her research focus is the protection of architectural heritage and urban settlements from natural hazard. Previously at University of Bath, she headed the Earthquake and Conservation Engineering Research group for 15 years. Recent interdisciplinary research encompasses the numerical analysis and design of retrofit intervention for adobe heritage in South America, the development of seismic analytical vulnerability functions for low and none engineered buildings worldwide within the GEM framework, the development of resilient measure to reduce vulnerability to flood and wind driven rain of historic buildings in the UK. In collaboration with industry Dina has developed dissipating device to be use in the retrofitting of historic building to mitigate the effect of seismic action. She is currently supervising research on definition of multi-hazard vulnerability functions for road infrastructures, the definition of fragility function for masonry infill steel frames and research into the effect of strengthening on seismic capacity and vulnerability assessment at territorial level. In collaboration with WB Dina’s is supervising an Eng D research on the relative effect of uncertainties in exposure and vulnerability on determining seismic risk in urban areas of Central America.

Dina is an EERI member, a SECED member and a member of the EEFIT team. She is associate editor of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, and member of the editorial board of the International Journal for Architectural Heritage. She has been a consultant to the WB, IDA, UNDP and UNESCO on projects of heritage conservation and hazard protection in the Middle East, Ethiopia, Turkey, Iraq, Nepal etc.

Hurricane and Earthquake risk profile for Belize.

Hurricane and Earthquake risk profile for Jamaica